Xanthic Growlithe Contract: Johto
by Facia
Summary: Elliot is an ordinary eleven year old trainer who has left his home region of Kanto for Johto, hoping to find it free of the strangeness and deception that plagued his journey. But he may not be so lucky... A continuation of Xanthic Growlithe Contract.
1. A Fresh Start

This is a sequel to Xanthic Growlithe Contract.

(x)

_The story so far:_

_Elliot left home like every other ten year old to become a trainer. He collected the eight badges of Kanto over the course of a year, but not in time to attend the Indigo Plateau, and wound up receiving an offer by a researcher under Bill to go to Johto._

_But it's not that simple. Things happened._

_And when he went to leave in Vermillion, he was met by an older boy, who offered to make him a member of the League if he would stay. Who told him what that was, and what it meant._

_And so Elliot left for Johto._

_He currently has six pokemon, his growlithe Howler, a mightyena named Din, a murkrow named Caw, a jigglypuff named Discord, a spearow named Sono and a persian named Prowler. The pokemon have their own peculiarities, some more obvious than others. Some past details: Howler is Elliot's starting pokemon. Discord can use uproar and can't sing. Caw was traded to Elliot for a meowth, and has had at least two trainers before this. Prowler was captured as a persian. She claims to have never belonged to a trainer and to have lived wild in the northern mountains, however, she has a scar from a head injury. Caw is confident she was trained, and other sources seem to support this._

* * *

Chapter One: A Fresh Start

(x)

Elliot disembarked and gaped at the new world.

The buildings were mixed. All of them were wider and a bit less tall than he was used to, more squares than rectangles. Some – houses, he guessed – were incredibly rustic-looking, simple and traditional. Others were completely modern, like the sleek Pokemon Mart he could see off in the distance. The two things clashed jarringly.

He checked the map, feeling almost relieved to look at something simple and familiar. He was in Olivine. He found the Pokemon Center on the paper, then traced the road back to where he was. Not too far.

He started walking, the spaced wooden plank flooring of the dock feeling unsafe under his feet, like he might somehow slip between the inch-wide cracks if he wasn't careful. It didn't help that his walk was unsteady after the time he'd spent on the boat, and he felt like he might fall at any moment. Once he was off that he was plunged into a crowd, the swirling multitude giving him the sense of looking at the world through a kaleidoscope. He slowed, wobbling dizzily. He focused on the ground under his feet, watching the buildings of the street out of the sides of his eyes. In his peripheral vision, they were the same as in any town in Kanto.

He walked, buffeted by the jostling mass of people around him, until he came to a corner. The map had said to turn there. He did.

He saw the Pokecenter in the distance. Focusing on that he started to hurry along the sidewalk, blocking out everything around him as much as he could. Finally he reached it and stepped through the doors.

It was like stepping into another world. Or back into the real one. The Center was the same as it had been in Kanto, exactly the same. Chairs and couches and tables, trainers sitting around alone or in small groups. Two near the door were discussing the city's gym leader (if you don't have a fire pokemon it's practically _impossible_) and a Joy was standing behind the counter.

Elliot had been told to identify himself to the Nurse Joy when he got there, so he walked up and did so. She smiled at him, nodded when he finished, and then asked him to follow her. They entered a side room where the Joy picked several gadgets off the wall.

"Here in Johto, trainers carry something we just call pokegear. I understand it's not in common use in Kanto," she said. This was an understatement: it was not in any kind of use in Kanto. "But it's really little different than what you should be used to. You're familiar with phones?"

Elliot nodded. "Yeah."

"The pokegear can function as a simplified version, a portable one. It won't transmit images, but you can call someone and talk anywhere."

It didn't show images? Elliot thought. But – how were you supposed to talk to someone if you couldn't see them?

"It also has a digital map that tracks your position, a clock, and can be upgraded to add new – well, you're from Kanto, so don't worry about it." She smiled kindly at him and handed the item over. She held up the next thing. "This is the Johto model of the pokedex. Johto is a bit more wild, and, well, certain items may occasionally not work, so we use more robust models. If you'd be so good as to trade in your current pokedex…" Elliot handed it to her and received the other one. It was the same color as his old one, but was designed slightly differently.

"Now, you may find Johto to be a bit…different than you're used to. There's a lot more diversity here. Or so I'm told. So, take your time, and don't feel you're under any pressure to buy new items or experience some of the more…niche activities of our region. Don't try to jump in if you're not sure you're ready."

Elliot nodded.

"And remember," she said, "if you feel like you want to return home, you can leave at any point."

(x)

Return home. No, he couldn't do that. Elliot had left the Center and gone out, trying to get used to Johto. He looked at the buildings, the people…it was all different, alien. But that, that was okay, he could handle it. After everything he'd seen, this wasn't so bad, he told himself.

He saw all sorts of people. There were even little kids playing at the beach with a pokeball on their waists, ones four or five years younger than him. Kids that young with pokemon, as trainers…it'd never be like that at home. And adults too, lots of adults were carrying a couple pokeballs too, not just older teens. And a lot of them had pokemon out as well, a dizzying array of pokemon Elliot had always considered incredibly rare – phanpy, togepi, smeargle, sunflora… and many of them were decorated somehow, with ribbons and sunglasses and cloth pouches swinging from around their necks. The people were no less varied, wearing clothing of all kinds and styles, with hair colors ranging from the same unremarkable brown of his own hair to bright greens and light blues. The variety even extended to the pokeballs they carried, many of which Elliot couldn't recognize.

And the buildings. He'd never seen so many different kinds of buildings before. They were all kinds of shapes and designs. Some were barely taller than him and others stretched up into the sky. One, a big tall rectangular building, jutted up between the city and the ocean, the top gleaming faintly in the afternoon sunlight. That was the lighthouse, he knew that from the map he'd poured over on the boat. Something about it bothered him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

He didn't go anywhere in particular, just wandered slowly. It was a lot to take in, that was all. But after a few hours, he was hugely relieved to return to the familiarity of the Pokecenter. It was just it was so…

So strange. It made him feel scared and homesick. He didn't know why, he just did.

But he'd get used to it, he thought. He had to. He wasn't going home. Not to a place like that, not now. Johto was different, but that's why he'd come. A place where it wouldn't be the way it was in Kanto.

(x)

The food served for supper at the Center was no less strange than the rest of the city, some kind of soup. It didn't taste bad exactly, just odd. Elliot ate it cautiously, in small spoonfuls.

A clutch of trainers across the table to his right gulped it down, talking happily.

"No way, you really got one?"

"Yeah." The girl's voice was proud. "You wouldn't believe how hard it was. Dunno why, but Silph's not letting it out of Kanto. Weird, huh? I mean, since when have they not wanted us to buy their stuff? It was super expensive to get even after I found someone, the guy charged me like you wouldn't believe!"

"You sure it'll be worth it?" said a boy to her left. "Seems like it's a big risk, going through so much trouble for something you've never tried."

A girl on her right nodded. "You haven't even seen it work once. What if you paid all that money for nothing?"

"But c'mon, you know what they're saying about it. I just _had_ to get one."


	2. Seaside

Hi everyone.

Hakura0 – Sabrina was left out because for some of the gym leaders, it made more sense for Elliot to fight an undertrainer. As to if she'll show up, that depends on if I think of a subplot that'll involve her. I'll see if I can, but I can't promise.

Negrek – Well, on the one hand, it doesn't seem to make sense that Silph would be preventing such a popular product as the helmet from getting into Johto…on the other hand, Gabriel said they don't make new products often. On the other, other hand Gabriel said the helmet was off the schedule, so maybe they have. Sorry, but it's a secret for now. :)

Act – I'm using the show version a bit for Johto, which makes its differences region-specific. In the game, you're right, there isn't much difference, but in the show, the items and pokemon only exist there, and Ash gets an upgraded pokedex for it. I'm also using the differences between the original RBY games and the newer GSC games a bit to give them slightly different basic architecture. (I suppose that means my story doesn't fit into either canon…)

I chose psyduck because I got an idea from the pokedex information. But don't expect it to crop up much, I'm planning for this region to have its own pokemon-of-weirdness that'll expand a bit on something started in the last story.

Everyone else – thanks for your reviews! I'm glad to hear you like how the story is going.

* * *

Chapter Two: Seaside

(x)

When Elliot woke the next morning, he realized he hadn't called home yet. After he had breakfast he headed to one of the video phones by the wall and called his mother. She was happy to see him and asked how he was in Johto. "Fine," he lied. "It's really just like Kanto, don't worry." Merci had already gone off to school so he couldn't talk to her, but his mother said she'd tell his sister he'd called.

Then he dialed the number he'd been given by Gabriel. The screen displayed the ring animation a few times before it was picked up. Gabriel appeared on the screen,

"Hey Elliot," he said. "I see you got to Johto all right."

Elliot nodded. "I'm in Olivine," he said, which was the only place he could be, as the SS Anne didn't stop anywhere else. "I just got here yesterday."

"There should be some miltank around there, in the north I've heard," Gabriel said. "Also some tauros. They're not too common, but if you head up that way, see if you can catch any. Bill's doing a lot of research on herd pokemon right now, and those would be invaluable. Anything of interest would be fine, though – we don't have much access to pokemon native to Johto."

"Sure," Elliot said.

(x)

Elliot looked over the world map, the paper one he'd been given before leaving Kanto. He hadn't touched the pokegear yet. There was another city far to the southwest called Cianwood, and one to the northeast called Ecruteak. Between Olivine and Cianwood was a large stretch of ocean, dotted with four islands. _Whirl__Islands_, Elliot read. He wondered what they were. They didn't look like much.

He didn't need to think about where he was going next, though. There was a gym right in Olivine, so he'd battle there first. Then he could think about traveling.

Elliot folded his regional map and put it back into his bag, switching it for the map of Olivine he'd gotten on the boat. His eyes scanned over it, quickly finding the Olivine Gym. It was a ways away from the Pokecenter. Odd, Elliot thought. Weren't gyms usually pretty close to Pokemon Centers? Well, it wasn't really important, and he wouldn't have any trouble getting there if he just followed the map.

He walked out of the Center and froze in his tracks. The – everything. Even in the morning all sorts of people were traveling around, and the buildings, the city…

Elliot closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then began walking. He glanced down at the map in his hands constantly, trying to match up the simple lines on the paper with the alien city streets. After a while he started to acclimate somewhat, and could move faster.

He made it at last to the gym, which didn't look like any gym he'd ever seen, and tried the door. It was locked.

"Sorry, Jaz isn't here," said a voice. Elliot turned to see a boy sitting cross-legged on the grass, in the shadow of one of the twin pillars placed on either side of the path leading up to the door of the gym. It was because of his position Elliot hadn't seen him while walking up.

"Jaz?" Elliot repeated.

"Jasmine, the Leader," the boy clarified. "She's up in the lighthouse with Amphy, because he's sick. Tradition says she's 'sposed to be up there when that happens. 'Course she's not really held to that these days but she went anyway. She's a nice person, really. So I'm watching the gym to make sure nothing happens until Amphy gets better or dies, because she doesn't have any junior trainers and I'm her cousin." The boy paused to take a breath. "So who've you? You look like a drenched magmar."

"My name's Elliot."

"Cool," the boy said meaninglessly. "My name's Jade."

"Jade? But isn't-" The boy glared at him and Elliot shut up.

"So how far're you in the League? Beat Whitney or anything?"

Elliot had no idea who that was. He shook his head. "This'll be my first badge."

Jade looked at him with mild curiosity, as if he'd said something odd. "Really? How old are you?"

"Te – eleven."

"Huh. Usually if somebody doesn't start at ten, they don't go right the next year. More prob'ly start at thirteen than eleven." Jade scrutinized him. "How come ten was too young but eleven's old enough?"

"No," Elliot said, understanding. "I'm – from Kanto. I just got here."

"Really?" The other boy's eyes lit up. "Wow, don't see one of those too often. You get all their badges?"

Elliot nodded. "I got the last one about a month ago."

"Cool," the boy said again. "Well, if you're a hurrier, you shouldn't hang around here. I don't know when Jaz'll be back. If you want a fight, you'd be better off heading to another city for your badge."

(x)

"So how do I get to Cianwood?" Elliot asked plaintively.

"That's not my problem, kid. Build a boat or something," the man said. "You shoulda caught a water type if you wanted to travel."

Cianwood had another gym, and since the only way to get to Cianwood was from Olivine, Elliot hadn't wanted to set off north to a different city. He'd gone down to where the SS Anne had docked, hoping to find a ferry over the water, but it seemed that wouldn't be possible.

Back on Cinnabar, they'd had rental pokemon. He'd never thought of having to get a pokemon of his own to travel with. Did he really need to catch one now to get across? Why? It didn't make any sense. How did they expect people to get to the gym?

Elliot remembered things he'd heard about Johto. It wasn't much, but he'd heard stuff about them not making things easy for trainers, not improving things even when the need arose. He'd heard they'd actually left the ruins of a huge building in one city up for generations, never fixing it or tearing it down. Was that how it'd be now?

A water type. He headed down to the beach. Then he sat on the sand, flipping through his new pokedex for a good sea pokemon. It wasn't much different than his old one, but it worked a little differently and seemed to have a lot of new features Elliot didn't want to touch.

Two boys were watching the water nearby, talking. Their voices carried easily over the modest noise of the waves.

"Think today's a good day, Jodoc?" asked one boy. He sounded like he was eight or nine years old.

The boy he was talking to was bigger, perhaps as old as seventeen. "The sky's clear," he said thoughtfully. "But the waves are too strong. You see how fast they're coming in, and how sharply they're breaking. The Sea God's kingdra aren't resting today."

"Really? It's such a nice day…" The younger boy sounded disappointed.

The older boy leaned over and ruffled his hair. "Be patient, Pete. You know how dangerous the Islands are even at the best of times. The Sea God isn't happy. If the waves are like this here, they'll be violent there, and I know, they're only going to get worse as the day goes on. I'll toss a coin to the kingdra and we'll see if it's better tomorrow."

The two left, and Elliot returned to searching through his pokedex. Pretty much every big one he found was rare or evolved, both of which he'd probably not be able to find around here. He'd never thought about it, but he knew that evolved pokemon were almost impossible to find in the wild. Besides, he didn't even know the sort of pokemon he could expect to be near Olivine, or which he could catch, or anything.

He opened Caw's Greatball. "Hey," he said. "I need a pokemon to get across the water. What do you think would be a good one?"

Caw looked around. He ruffled his feathers. ((Where are we?))

"Olivine," Elliot said.

The murkrow tensed for a moment, surprised, then recovered. ((Perhaps…)) he said, considering. ((Follow me.)) He beat his wings and flew along the coast, circling to go slowly enough for Elliot to keep up. They continued until they had left the swimmers and sunbathers well behind.

The sand became narrower, a forest springing up at the edge and then encroaching continually as they moved along. The beach became rockier and rockier. Before long they came to a place with huge, rough stones making almost a wall out into the water. Suddenly Caw plummeted from the sky, spreading his wings at the last moment to slow his fall and landing. Elliot started to ask what was happening.

((Don't make noise,)) Caw said, his voice hissing softly through his beak. ((Pokemon sometimes come into places here where the water is shallow and calm. There's a mantine sunning itself just beyond here, between the rocks.))

"So I should go attack?"

((No, he'll just dive. We need to time this right. Release Sono. The two of us will attack first.))

Elliot nodded, releasing Sono. Caw explained the plan.

(x)

The mantine was floating half out of the water. It was just barely too shallow for the pokemon to submerge. There was a steep drop-off in the underwater sand bottom just beyond the twin rock walls. If attacked, he'd slide that way, sinking under the water and vanishing in seconds.

Capture hinged on preventing that, driving him in the opposite direction. There he could be captured and defeated.

The two birds flew up. The mantine noticed them but the warm water had made him sluggish, buying them a few extra seconds. Sono and Caw beat their wings, creating a driving wind.

For a moment the mantine was pressed back. But then, perhaps recognizing the trap or perhaps just driven by instinct towards the safety of deepening water, he pushed against the attack, moving towards the open water. He was going to escape.

Caw dove, striking him through an inch or so of water. Sono continued to beat her wings and the stunned mantine washed backward. Caw struggled in the water, feathers soaked.

Elliot released his other pokemon to attack the partially beached pokemon. Howler bit the right side wing that extended onto the dry sand and tugged. Prowler jumped into the shallow water and began attacking.

Din didn't attack. Instead the mightyena looked around, shifting from paw to paw anxiously on the unstable sand and staring at the crashing waves against the shoreline, bewildered.

The mantine thrashed. He whipped one wing up, flipping Howler head over heels to splash into the deeper water on the other side. As the wing came down again, it sent a surge of water at Din, who was knocked back.

Howler was scrambling madly in the water. Like Elliot's meowth in the first battle at the Cerulean Gym, he didn't look for land and try to make his way towards that. Instead he tried to pull himself onto the first solid thing his paws touched. He clawed at the mantine. His nails were blunt but that only meant they tore rather than cut. Gouges opened on the water type's body. The mantine tried to toss Howler away, but he didn't have the leverage and his failed attempt only made the growlithe more desperate, ripping the mantine worse and worse as he tried to pull himself from the deadly water.

Sono had landed on one of the rocks at the side, exhausted and unable to stay airborne. Caw, bedraggled, was also resting there, and Sono was helping him preen the heavy salt water from his feathers.

Din had tried to join in but recoiled, unwilling to get near the strange pulsing water.

Prowler was still determinedly attacking, ducking and dodging as the mantine tried to crush her under his body. She knew to stay in the shallows, where the water only reached halfway up her legs. Any deeper and it would drag at her, slowing her down. She was certain she could kill him in this situation. She'd done this before, not often but enough times to know, and she knew she needed only patience and endurance. The advantage was hers.

With a sudden burst of energy Howler finally made it atop the mantine, who undulated, tossing him off to smack into the rocks. Elliot recalled him.

The water was bloody. Prowler had shredded his tough outer skin and was cutting deeper and deeper. Soon she'd get to something vital, or else he'd lose enough blood to die.

Elliot threw a Greatball. Prowler yowled angrily as her paws passed through. She had almost beaten it!

The pokeball floated on the surface, any rocking motion hidden by the waves. Elliot started to wade out to grab it before it was pulled out by the current. As his hands were about to close around it, it burst open. Elliot was crushed under, the air knocked out of him. Prowler pushed herself further out and slashed furiously at the wing, only to be smashed back by the other one. In deeper water her movement was more limited and his freer.

Caw laboriously took off, picked the Greatball off the surface of the water and dropped it onto the mantine. Prowler dove under as the pokemon turned red, grabbing Elliot and pulling him towards the shore.

The murkrow plucked the pokeball out of the water and flew back to join them. Din was running back and forth, barking fearfully. When Prowler and Elliot left the water she licked them frantically, and then did the same to Caw. Elliot was coughing and gasping, his eyes stinging from the salt. When he finally blinked them clear, he saw Caw standing in front of him, the Greatball resting near his feet.

((You caught the mantine,)) Caw told him.

Elliot reached out and picked it up off the sand. He didn't realize he was shivering until he saw his arm shake.

For some reason, he didn't feel scared, just cold and wet and a bit bruised.

"So, guys," he said, feeling dazed. "We're going to Cianwood."


	3. Storm

Sorry this chapter's late, everyone. Between schoolwork and the SATs, I was swamped last week. On the brighter side, this chapter's pretty long, so I hope that makes up for it a bit (although a lot of that is just the battle scenes…I hope you're not as tired of those as I am, because there are going to be a lot of them…)

Does anyone else think it's odd bird pokemon don't learn scratch? I know I'm usually more worried about the five inch razor sharp claws of death on supposedly harmless birds than I am their beaks. Except for ducks, so of course psyduck can use scratch.

Kookie – Elliot's definitely not going to Orre, as I'm not really sure how I'd connect that region to the others, but Hoenn's a possibility.

Act – :) Actually, show canon triumphs again, and my Johto has a separate League (or, I hope that's show canon…actually I stopped watching midway through Johto, but I think that's what it was…)

SP – Thanks for finding the typo, I've fixed it.

* * *

Chapter Three: Storm

(x)

Elliot became aware his new pokedex was beeping angrily. He picked it up and flipped it open.

_Exchange?_ flashed the screen.

((You have six pokemon,)) Caw reminded him. ((You need to select which pokemon you want to send into storage. I myself would suggest the growlithe as the least useful of us on the ocean.))

"Oh," Elliot said. He made his way through the unfamiliar controls and chose Howler. The Greatball on his waist vanished, along with the beeping.

Elliot turned and looked over the water. Should he just get going now? He shivered again. No, he'd go back to the Pokemon Center, heal his pokemon and dry off. Then he'd get going.

(x)

Or not. By the time Elliot had changed into dry clothing, sheets of rain were pouring from the sky. Going out now would make the time he took to dry off pointless, and he'd already gotten wet enough for one day. He settled down and waited.

(x)

The sky was still cloudy when Elliot ventured out, but it wasn't raining. He headed down the damp sidewalk to the sea. The beach was empty, the wet sand darker and somewhat more stable than before. He walked down to the edge of the water, the waves just reaching the tips of his shoes.

Eliot didn't want to get his feet wet, so he didn't go further. He tossed the pokeball.

The mantine appeared, beached in the shallows. It flexed its wings unhappily.

"Hey, Mantine," Elliot said. "Um, I want to go to Cianwood. I'd like you to take me there."

The mantine was quiet and simply twitched a bit. Elliot wasn't sure what to do. Impatiently, the mantine wiggled itself out a bit. Elliot took this as agreement. He climbed onto the mantine's back as the pokemon began to ease itself off the sand.

The mantine's body undulated and began to skim over the waves. The water was choppy and as waves broke against the pokemon, the froth sprayed up over Elliot's hands as he tried to hold on. It was nothing like the ride on the blastoise, which had been smooth and dry.

It was somewhat dark, the ocean the color of steel and the clouds above as dark as smoke. There was a light mist over the water, so that when Elliot stared out he saw only water fading into a smudged horizon, like a chalk drawing where someone had dragged their thumb across the boundary where two colors met. He couldn't see any land.

Anxiety began to bubble up inside him. His stomach knotted. He was alone and there was nothing anywhere, it was all empty, nothing, nothing at all.

"Are we going to Cianwood?" Elliot yelled over the wind, which had picked up, whipping across his face. "Mantine, are we going to Cianwood?" The mantine had no way of answering him, he realized. It continued swimming, apparently unaffected by his words if, he thought, it heard him at all.

Time seemed to slow. The mantine continued swimming and swimming over the endless wasteland of pitted water. Elliot's breath was coming in panicky gasps. His hands were numb. His face was numb as well, and his legs were drenched repeatedly in icy water from waves breaking over the mantine's body. It might have been darker than when he had started – he couldn't remember.

Elliot thought he saw something through the dim light and mist. The waves seemed to have gotten worse, growing even more violent. The land came closer, enough for him to be sure that was what it was. For a moment he was relieved, but then realized the mantine wasn't swimming towards it, but past.

"Stop," he tried to tell it. "You're going the wrong way." It didn't change its path. "It's over that way, we have to go there," he pleaded, and still it continued swimming, unperturbed. Soon they were close and Elliot could see the rocky ground, something tall and indistinct looming beyond that which did not look like anything humans built. He was suddenly afraid again, and he was silent. They passed it, the mantine swimming unconcernedly. Elliot tried to turn to watch it recede but a wave nearly knocked him from the mantine's back, and he turned and focused on holding on.

It grew darker, and Elliot thought he heard thunder in the distance. The clouds above were black and the water the mantine swam over had acquired the color of tar. He didn't know how long they continued, but finally he thought he could see something again, nothing distinct in the darkness but a shade of black different than the air and water. This came closer and closer and Elliot thought he could hear waves breaking against something solid.

Presently the mantine beached itself in the shallows and Elliot scrambled off, his legs giving out beneath him so that he fell on his hands and knees in the surf. He managed to stand, fumbled with half-frozen fingers to recall the mantine.

Cianwood, he thought to himself. He must have made it to Cianwood. He began to stumble along the dark beach towards the glow of lights he thought must have been the city.

(x)

When Elliot entered the Center he found the Joy still awake, even though it didn't seem there was anyone else around who wasn't sleeping. She was shocked to see him and it was only then he realized how he looked – his clothing still dripping occasionally, salt crusted on his shirt, his hands bluish-white from the cold. When he explained how he had gotten there she stood stunned, her expression shifting between anger and relief, as if she couldn't decide how to respond.

"Didn't – my sister at the other Pokecenter, didn't she tell you?" she said faintly. "When you told her you were going to try to cross the ocean."

"I didn't talk to her about that," Elliot said.

"I can't believe you made it," she told him. "Going out on the water between storms, late, on an untrained pokemon. And you didn't even know the way. It's a miracle you're alive. More experienced people than you have killed themselves like that."

"Oh," he said. Somehow the thought of how much danger he'd been in didn't seem to have any effect on him. He felt strangely disconnected from the conversation, as if they were talking about someone else. He winced suddenly, tears springing into his eyes and his hands and feet abruptly began to feel as if they were being stabbed all over, and aching at the same time.

"I'm sorry," apologized the Joy quickly. "I'll show you to a room and you can warm up." Motioning Elliot to follow her she turned and Elliot walked after her, his gait somewhat limping as his feet protested each time he shifted the pressure on them.

Inside the room he stripped off his heavy clothing and sat under the shower, the water droplets feeling like they burned.

(x)

He woke late the next morning but didn't feel any worse for his trip the day before, except perhaps for a bit of stiffness. He went out to eat breakfast.

"Man," a boy was saying, "Chuck's just brutal. No holds barred."

"Y'think so?" a girl said. "I thought the fight wasn't too hard. He doesn't have much of a strategy."

"Yeah, but my team's mostly normal type. He charges right in, if you can't survive that –"

"-but if you do you'll probably win it all. His pokemon've got strength, but I really wouldn't call them strong. Not much in the way of strategy, that one. Besides – did you see that guy? I think he forgot exactly who's the one doing the fighting, y'know? Hey, you want me to loan you Sessy?"

"Nah, your vaporeon doesn't like me much and besides, I think I can beat him. We just need to train some more."

Listening, Elliot wondered how he'd do. None of his pokemon were resistant to fighting type moves. Sono, Caw and Howler weren't weak against them…but could they really hold up against an attack? He'd used Caw back at the dojo in Saffron, but he'd gotten hit a bunch of times. If the fighting pokemon here were really strong, maybe they'd just knock him out.

Could he really win a fight with just those three? Sono had a bit of a type advantage but she seemed to get knocked out easily. Maybe that was just his imagination, but he didn't feel quite sure about relying on her against heavy-hitting pokemon.

Well, Elliot thought, it couldn't hurt to try.

It's hard to say what can set them off. It'd probably be best if you don't lose at a gym for a long as you can.

Try not to attract attention.

Michael had told him that, but that was in Kanto. He didn't need to worry about that now.

Not now.

(x)

Cianwood was…

Elliot was stunned. Not in the usual way of being impressed but the more literal: he stopped dead and just stared blankly with all the intelligence of a caught magikarp that had just been thwacked against the ground.

There had been bustle at Olivine, but nothing like this, not at all. The buildings were different, again, crude square constructs of cement and metal that made the designs he'd seen back in Pewter look frail and airy. The people he saw were burly and rough, huge musclebound men unloading giant bundles easily twice as big as he was, all of them jostling together in an immense crowd near the docks. Why wasn't there any ferry if there were docks? Elliot thought randomly. Then he wondered if he'd be squashed if he tried entering the fray.

That was silly, he told himself. Still, it took him a moment to work up the nerve to enter, and although it seemed people weren't shoving each other half as hard as it had looked from the outside, the crowd was still made mainly of adults a good third taller than him and big. Even inside the group he still felt out of place, ungrounded. The scenery was so strange it felt like he was inside a video game, one of the ones were most of the background is just one flat painted image, everything just as close and far away as the thing next to it, and he couldn't seem to make out people and buildings as distinct instead of just one image, dashes of jumbled colors on a single painting. He couldn't make out distance well and he kept focusing on the wrong things anyway, leading to smacking into several things face-first, as well as tripping repeatedly on fallen items on the ground or holes in the road.

He didn't understand how anyone could stand living in a place like this. He-

But he'd get used to it, he told himself. He had to get used to it, and he would. He was in Johto now. He couldn't go back. Not – not now.

(x)

The gym's architecture fit well into the rest of the city, which was to say Elliot found it bizarre, alien, and fundamentally disturbing. He entered.

There was a boy several years older than him, maybe as old as sixteen. He was dressed in a loose, white thing that looked like a cross between a robe and pajamas. Elliot knew it was for karate but had no idea what it was called. Why would someone be wearing that inside a gym?

"Hey!" the boy said, grabbed a pokeball by his waist. "Let's go! Nobody gets to the Leader without proving themselves to me first!"

Elliot considered a moment, then picked Howler's Greatball and threw it. The boy tossed his as well.

A hitmonlee.

"Flame it, Howler!" Elliot yelled.

"Jump kick!"

The hitmonlee launched itself at Howler as the growlithe exhaled a flamethrower. The pokemon cut through the fire and smashed into Howler, striking him on the head. Howler went down as the hitmonlee regained its footing, looking only slightly singed. Elliot was about to recall his pokemon but Howler managed to stand again, abet a bit unsteadily.

"Great, Howler!" he shouted. "You can do it! Try take down!"

Howler charged and rammed into the hitmonlee. It doubled over and was pushed back a yard or so.

"Mega kick, Bruce!"

The hitmonlee straightened. One leg whipped out, clipping the side of Howler's head and knocking him down again. As the growlithe struggled up, the hitmonlee backed up a few paces, getting distance before

"Flamethrower again!" Elliot ordered. "Try to burn it!"

Howler's flamethrower cut off at the second command. He turned to Elliot uncertainly.

"Low kick!"

"Do something!" Elliot yelled.

As the hitmonlee charged, its long legs quickly closing the distance, Howler released a small fireball that burst brightly on contact. The hitmonlee let out a cry and stumbled, falling to the ground and skidding painfully a foot from its momentum. It managed to get its weaker arms propped under to stabilize itself and then lashed out with one leg, hitting Howler in the side and knocking him out.

"You're only got one more chance," the boy said.

"Caw!" Elliot shouted, tossing the pokeball. "Try gust!"

The murkrow beat his wings, creating a tightly controlled miniature twister.

"Dodge, Bruce!" the other boy yelled.

The hitmonlee tried to, but it seemed to have trouble walking on its right leg, and it didn't manage to get out of the way. The attack picked it up and spun it around until it hit the wall. The boy recalled it and chose his next pokemon.

"Ice punch!" he ordered as the hitmonchan formed.

Oops.

"Dodge!" Caw flew up, out of range. "Okay, now, um, gust again!"

Caw flapped his wings again and sent the attack. The air buffeted the hitmonchan but it managed to withstand it.

"Now, dive and then peck," Elliot ordered.

Steeling himself, Caw dropped.

"Thunderpunch!"

The hitmonchan punched. Caw rolled slightly, so that the fist of the hitmonchan grazed him rather than hitting directly and stopping his attack. The electricity hurt, but the other pokemon wasn't strong enough to make the attack stop him. He struck the hitmonchan in the face, then pecked rapidly. The hitmonchan punched Caw off, the attack stunning him for a moment.

Caw managed to stabilize himself and hover. Luckily for him the other trainer seemed focused on exploiting the type advantage with element punches – hitmonchan needed incredible amounts of practice to become good at those. The trainer was probably too focused on the fact he was flying to realize the regular attacks would be more useful.

Unordered but angry, its face still smarting, the hitmonchan darted forward and punched him again.

"Slow it down with icy wind!"

Waste of time, Caw thought, already guessing what the result of the attack would be. Thunderpunch might be painful, but the physical ones were worse. He focused on making the air cold as he beat his wings. Slow the hitmonchan down and the trainer would probably just…

He sent the frosty air towards his opponent, watching as a light dusting of ice formed over the hitmonchan.

"Mach punch, Jackie!"

The hitmonchan launched itself forward, fist punching him squarely. He went tumbling into the ground. Dizzy, he struggled to pull himself up. He could feel Elliot fretting behind him, worried about the impending loss.

He focused, gathering his energy.

The hitmonchan paused for a moment, clearly thinking he was no longer able to fight. The trainer also paused.

He launched himself off the ground almost into the ceiling. Rather than hover and then drop he tilted his feathers and directed his momentum down again without hesitation, still putting everything into flying as fast as he could as he approached the hitmonchan from above.

He struck the hitmonchan and it crumpled.

Elliot won.

(x)

With Howler fainted and Caw looking like he wasn't far from the same, Elliot decided to head back to the Center before continuing. He stepped out of the building and back into the chaos.

Somehow he retraced his steps and found the Pokemon Center.

It was like coming to an oasis, a sudden pocket of calmness and reality. The trainers inside, perhaps they were a bit more outlandish than he was used to, but nothing compared to the general population outside. And the building – the building, the room, they were part of the real world again.

He didn't want to go back out again.

_"You may have beaten me, but there's no way you'll manage to win against the Leader."_

While his pokemon healed, Elliot thought about what the boy had said. He'd been right, hadn't he? If Elliot could barely beat him, he didn't stand a chance against the gym leader.

Michael's words came back to him again. Again he told himself that didn't matter, that this wasn't Kanto. It wasn't the same. Couldn't be the same.

It didn't take long for Caw and Howler to be healed. Then it was time to head out again, back to the gym. The trip was slightly easier, either because he was becoming used to it or just because he knew the way better.

He found Chuck in the back of the gym, lifting huge, round rocks. He was huge himself, covered in muscles so sharply defined they might have been sculpted. While the fighting trainers he'd seen in Saffron had been muscular, none had been so inhumanly so. As Elliot watched, the man picked up one rock and tossed it up so it smashed into bits on a pillar. It broke oddly, fragmenting into shards.

How could Elliot possibly win against someone like that?

Chuck spotted him. "Another challenger?" he boomed, placing the rock he was holding back on the ground. "A scrawny thing like you?"

"Y-yeah," Elliot managed.

"Ha!" he barked. "But I can't refuse a challenge. The battle will be two on two. Pick your first pokemon!" He threw out a pokeball of his own, releasing a primeape.

Two pokemon. Elliot felt slightly relieved. That meant he could just use Caw and Howler. "Go, Caw!"

"Trying to type-match?" Chuck said contemptuously. "That can never make up for strength – Primeape, cross chop!"

The pokemon charged at Caw, striking him with both arms. The murkrow tumbled back.

"Peck!" Caw did so, narrowly missing the primeape's eye.

"Mega punch!"

"Fly!"

Caw flew up just before the primeape's fist reached him. He hovered, waiting for the next command.

"Now dive!"

"Cross chop!"

The two collided. As they separated, Elliot saw a patch of red on the primeape's right arm where Caw, having not been ordered to peck, had decided he had enough leeway to try something more effective. His talons had ripped off the skin and torn up some of the muscle underneath. The primeape grumbled to itself, shaking the arm to try to dispel the sting. Unbidden, Caw took the chance to send a small gust at the other pokemon.

"Mega kick!"

"Dodge it and use icy wind!"

Caw twisted out of the way so that the primeape went past him, then sent a flurry of freezing wind at the primeape as it landed. A thin sheet of ice covered the other pokemon, but quickly began to crack and melt. Before the primeape could finish shaking it off, Caw swooped in and battered the fighting type with his wings.

"Cross chop again!"

The primeape partially executed the attack, but used only one arm. Caw retaliated with another gust, a stronger one, which sent the primeape tumbling into the back wall. The other pokemon jumped back onto his feet.

"Mega punch!"

"Peck again!"

Caw dodged the attack and wrapped his claws around the primeape's injured arm. He began pecking. The primeape screamed. It knocked Caw off, the murkrow taking a sizeable chunk out of its arm when this happened.

The primeape hopped back, cradling its injured arm and letting out low-pitched squeals. It ignored Chuck's next command. Looking irritated, the gym leader recalled it.

"Go, Poliwrath!"

A water type? But –

"Ice beam!"

Elliot recalled Caw immediately and the poliwrath paused its attack.

He'd been expecting another regular fighting type. He hadn't thought about what he'd do if the pokemon had a dual type. He couldn't use Howler now. And if it knew ice beam, he couldn't use Sono either.

Prowler, then. "Go!" he yelled. "Use slash!"

She appeared and didn't. Instead she began to move to the side, making the poliwrath start to turn to keep facing her.

"Dynamic punch!"

The poliwrath's white fist began to glow. He ran at her and swung his arm forward. She jumped out of the way and the attack hit the floor, causing it to shatter.

"Mind reader!"

The pokemon stopped and closed his eyes. Prowler turned and took the opportunity to slash him across the chest, opening a long series of gashes. The poliwrath didn't react.

"Now!" Chuck ordered.

His eyes opened. Prowler backed up, not sure what was happening. The poliwrath's first glowed again. She tried to dodge but he seemed to know which was she was intending to go and she only ended up throwing herself directly into the path of the attack. She was tossed to the ground, the room spinning. She tried to get up but was leaning too far to one side and fell again.

"Prowler! What's wrong? Prowler!" Elliot was frightened. He hadn't seen this before. "Are you okay?"

She managed to stand as Chuck ordered another attack. The poliwrath punched her in the side, the impact stunning her for an instant. At the second punch she lashed out blindly, her claws catching on something and she focused on that, managing to sink her fangs into the strange flesh, muscular and gelatinous, sickening. Blood spurted over her face and paws. She held on with both claws and felt the poliwrath tearing himself open as he struggled to get free. Suddenly he was no longer there and she fell forward, her forelegs no longer supported, to sway somewhat drunkenly on her feet. A moment later she vanished as well.

Chuck looked impressed, if somewhat grudgingly. He handed the Storm Badge to Elliot and complimented Elliot's persian. It wasn't often, he said, that he saw a pokemon with such determination.

Somehow, Elliot wasn't as happy at the compliment as he felt he should be.

(x)

Outside, Elliot saw two boys fighting in the street. One had bright green hair, the other red. They pulled apart for an instant and the red-haired boy decked the other and ran off with a pokeball in his hand.

The green-haired boy got to his feet and took off after him. "Thief!" he yelled. "Bring that back!" He sprinted down the street, weaving around the adults, who were walking along unconcerned. They both vanished from Elliot's sight almost immediately.

Unsettled, Elliot continued back to the Pokemon Center.

(x)

Once there, Elliot decided not to go out again. He explained it to himself as not wanting to be out while there was someone stealing pokemon in the streets, but really, he was exhausted, mentally if not physically, from his four trips out into the street and disturbed from seeing Prowler nearly disembowel the poliwrath. He didn't want to do anything else.

Other trainers around him were still upbeat and energetic. In his own lethargic mood he watched them, finding it inconceivable anyone could act that way.

"Oh my god, you really got it! I can't believe it! Thank you!" a girl nearby was squealing, jumping up and down. "Thank you thank you!" She hugged a pokeball to her chest.

"It's no big deal," the other girl said, sounding somewhat embarrassed. "The breeder had a couple there when I went, so I bought two. I know you've been trying to get one."

"Is it a boy?"

"Yeah." The girl laughed. "Really, it couldn't be anything else. They're only selling males, at least in the place I went. Good thing you didn't want a girl, huh?"

"Yeah." She grinned. "This is great! What should I name him?"

"Just not Cubony, okay?"

"Oh, come on, I was like five then! I'm not going to name a pokemon something like that."

"You were eight."

"And you named your caterpie Catie! And you were as old as me, so there!" She stuck out her tongue, then laughed again. "Hey, how about Graveling?"

"Sounds a bit morbid."

"I think it's clever."


	4. Irregularities

Apologies! I'm late again…

Act – Ack! Awkward wording on my part. I meant Elliot wasn't expecting a dual-type, but rereading, it does read as you said. Fixed that.

Cedric – Well, the cubone being male will play a part in the weirdness…but just a part.

The Joy in Olivine would probably have told him pretty much what the Joy in Cianwood said, and said he shouldn't try it.

Negrek – Thanks for pointing that out, I don't know what happened! I've fixed it now.

Elliot's reaction is pretty extreme, I know. But normal people traveling to a new place do wind up very disoriented, and, since Elliot comes from Kanto-of-uniformity (and is greatly disturbed by _anything_ that doesn't fit properly – broken rocks, the northern forests), I figured his reaction would be even stronger.

It's Graveling with a long _a_, actually. (I noticed it looked more like the other way after I'd written it, but, well, it was very fitting to the conversation without requiring much in the way of naming skills, so I didn't want to try to replace it with something else…)

* * *

Chapter Four: Irregularities

(x)

At breakfast, Elliot found a portion of trainers glued to a television in the corner. It seemed to be on the local news. One of the girls was chaffing a pendant under her thumb as she watched.

"…still no sign of the three fishermen who washed overboard," the news anchor was saying. "A search is underway but hampered by strong, unpredictable currents and poor visibility. Experts-"

The television was shut off abruptly. "We shouldn't be watching this," said the boy who'd done it. "Trust she'll bring them home, or else, trust she took them for a reason."

"He didn't do anything," the girl with the pendant whispered. "He respected them. He wasn't the one who wanted to take the boat out."

The children exchanged glances. "We should see if the captain had a charm," said a girl.

"He didn't."

"You're certain?" asked a boy.

The first girl nodded, looking like she was about to cry.

"Then, we'll see who she wants."

There was quiet, then the group put on jackets and left.

(x)

When Elliot let out his pokemon, Prowler told him she would take Din out.

"Why?"

((She should learn to swim.))

"I don't think now is a good time," Elliot said. "They just said no one should go swimming. The water's really bad."

Prowler stared at him as if he was acting unusually stupid. ((I can swim,)) she told him, as if that resolved everything.

"Yeah, but the announcement said even if you're a good swimmer-"

((I can swim,)) Prowler repeated. ((Therefore I can tell where the current is weak, therefore I will find a place it is safe.)) The tone of her voice made it clear she thought this should be obvious. ((We will be back later.)) Before Elliot could think of a response, she and Din had left.

((Stupid persian,)) Caw muttered, pecking at his food.

-

The rain finally stopped perhaps an hour later. Elliot had grown bored enough to begin to poke about his new pokedex, which he'd been avoiding using. It wasn't much different than his old one in function, but it was set up differently and he still didn't feel entirely comfortable. Something else was bothering him about it too. Why had the Joy needed to give him one, anyway? She'd said something about it being sturdier or something, but he didn't really understand.

He was glad to drop both the pokedex and the train of thought and head out. Other trainers seemed to agree with him, and the Pokemon Center rapidly emptied.

The sky was still overcast, the clouds a light grey, bright enough to hurt his eyes slightly when he stared up for a while.

He was still somewhat bewildered by the city, but he made up his mind that he would get used to it. Fewer people were in the streets, which helped. The things he saw were still strange, but at least they were more static and he could deal with them better. He wandered around, trying to get used to what he was seeing.

The sidewalks and building walls dried slowly. By the time the water had finished evaporating, Elliot was starting to see the buildings as buildings. Weird buildings still, but buildings. He could see how they were really very similar to those of Kanto. They were wider overall, and perhaps slightly less tall. What really threw him was how varied they were. He thought if they had all been the same it would have been easier to get used to, but they weren't. The houses had one sort of design, the Pokecenter and similar buildings another, and stores were somewhere in between.

One store was made of hewn wood and thatched, with stones and sticks holding down the roof. It had a sort of woven mat for a door. Elliot was surprised to find it was apparently a pharmacy. He thought of pharmacies as being slick places not far removed from hospitals, not huts. A wooden post nearby informed him that the pharmacy dated back five hundred years. At first he was going to pass it by, but he decided to head inside just because he felt somewhat nervous at the idea. I am going to get used to this, he told himself.

It was dim inside, and although perfectly clean to Elliot's eye, the interior was little different than the exterior. Wares were set out on the shelves, none of which looked anything like the neatly packaged, sterile things he was used to. The man inside encouraged him to buy some medicine, but Elliot decided against it. He didn't really trust the idea of homemade medicine. If whoever made it had done something wrong…he didn't really know much about what could go wrong, but he was sure he didn't want to find out by accident.

Continuing on Elliot found another place that was almost the polar opposite of the pharmacy. It was a modern building with flat hard walls, which were made neatly enough and with a heavy enough cover of white paint as to give no sigh of what their building material was. There were big glass windows that were all the same size and fitted perfectly into the building's sides. A sign with red letters Elliot was sure were the sort that would light up at night informed him that this was a photo studio. Elliot wasn't particularly interested in that and he thought he could guess what was inside, so he didn't bother going inside.

Tired of forcing himself to explore, Elliot headed out onto the beach. The sand was dry and soft. Elliot noticed suddenly that it wasn't quite the same as it was back in Kanto – it was larger grained, darker and less fluffy. Or maybe he was just imagining it.

There were other people on the beach. Elliot noticed a few people in the water, but they were a small number compared to how many there were on the beach and they stuck close to the shore. Only a handful were actually swimming, and they weren't out far. Most of those around Elliot were staying on the sand. Two children were playing with a kite, and a number of people were having pokemon battles.

"Hey!" shouted a boy of perhaps thirteen, spying Elliot. "Let's battle!"

"Okay," Elliot agreed.

The boy released a cubone and Elliot decided on Discord. "Go!" he shouted, throwing the Safariball.

"Tackle!"

"Dodge!" Elliot ordered unwisely. Discord attempted to do so, but the jigglypuff was not especially graceful at the best of times, and with a strong wind coming off the ocean, he was having enough trouble moving normally. The cubone barreled into him and sent the Discord flying.

It took a good number of seconds for the jigglypuff to come back down and then stay without bouncing back up. The other boy looked surprised and impressed, probably not realizing the degree to which the pokemon's lightness and the ocean's wind had played a part. He congratulated the cubone.

"You okay?" Elliot asked Discord. The jigglypuff nodded, looking a bit puzzled. "Okay, try rollout!"

"Puff!" Discord said determinedly, beginning to spin. Sand flew up. He quickly realized couldn't stay in one place or he'd wind up digging himself into a hole. He launched himself at the cubone, kicking up sand as he went.

The traction was poor and Discord couldn't work up that great of a speed. Still, the cubone went flying. It hit the sand with a thump and took a moment to get up. It whined and snuffled to itself when it finally managed.

"Bone club!"

The cubone looked back at its trainer uncertainly.

"Come on, Cuboni!"

It hesitated, then ran wildly at Discord, waving its bone. Discord stepped aside and the cubone ran past and then halted, waiting for the next command. It still seemed somewhat perplexed.

"Leer!"

The cubone's head bent, tilting the skull's eye sockets so that its own eyes were clearly exposed. They might have glowed, or perhaps they just caught the light because of their angle. Discord held still a moment, but then shook his head and seemed to throw it off.

"Mega punch, Discord!"

Discord ran at the cubone – or tried to, giving an unintentionally amusing impression of someone running in low-gravity, like on the moon. The image was broken by his punch, which knocked the cubone head over heels over the sand in a split second. The cubone let out a high-pitched wail, then was silent, twitching a bit on the ground but not seeming able to even attempt standing.

"Return, Cuboni," the boy said. He considered, then threw a green pokeball Elliot didn't recognize. A golduck formed.

A single swipe from the golduck opened up scarlet lines across Discord's chest and contained enough force the daze the jigglypuff. Elliot didn't wait to see if his pokemon would manage to get back up, recalling him and throwing out Sono's pokeball.

Sono was taken out shortly, managing to get off a few attacks but quickly being stunned by a series of rapid water guns and then finished off fury swipes. Caw was called out next and managed to defeat the golduck only to be knocked out by the boy's next pokemon, a magmar.

(x)

Elliot stayed at the beach a while longer, letting Howler run around on the sand and the birds stretch their wings. It was starting to get late when Elliot left, heading back into the city of Cianwood.

More people were out on the streets now, and Elliot was somewhat hesitant. He'd had all he could take of Cianwood for the day. He walked more slowly, keeping his eyes on his path.

"Damn you! Murderer!" screamed a girl. She'd tackled another girl and was clawing at her like an animal. "Damn you!"

A boy and girl who she'd been walking with a moment before pulled her off. "Let go of me! Murderer!"

"Jolene, stop it," the girl said. "I'm sorry."

"Let go of me!"

"Jolene." The boy's voice was calm. "Doing this won't bring your boyfriend back. If she wants them returned, she'll return them. If she doesn't, she doesn't."

The girl they were holding suddenly slumped in their grasp bonelessly. Tears streamed down her face. She was deathly silent.

The boy looked back at the girl who'd been attacked. She was standing frozen, looking stunned and frightened. "Jolene is right, though," he said quietly. "It was your father's boat. He came back and three others didn't. Your family had no right to sail without the charm."

"That's just superstition!" she shouted. Her voice was high, terrified. "It doesn't have anything-"

"It was your father's boat. They were our people."

"The sea will take until he has what he wants," Jolene whispered, staring at the girl across from her.

"Don't threaten me." The girl's voice was terrified. "You can't do something like that."

"Benecia. The sea will decide. We aren't murderers. You can tell your father that."

The two stared at each other. After a moment, the girl looked away.

He helped Jolene to her feet and the three left.

(x)

Elliot didn't think long on the bizarre exchange in the street. He returned to the Center to find Din and Prowler already there, stretched out by a large heating vent. Din bounced up when she saw him and raced over, tail wagging excitably. She jumped up on him and Elliot realized they couldn't have been back long, as she was still damp.

((Elliot Elliot we went swimming and I caught a weird thing all by myself! It was round and soft and tasted like wires!))

"How do you know what wires taste like?" Elliot asked, bemused.

Din didn't answer. She licked him across the face, then ran around in a circle.

((She doesn't have as much energy as she seems to,)) Prowler said. She hadn't gotten up. ((She's fatigued, not used to this much exercise. That's why she's acting like this.))

Elliot didn't think this made sense, but didn't argue. He handed over his other pokeballs to the Nurse Joy to be healed and then exchanged Howler for the mantine. He didn't want to wait around Cianwood any longer. Even if the weather didn't improve, he figured he'd be okay. After all, he'd gotten to Cianwood okay, and it hadn't been that bad, just uncomfortable. He briefly thought about what the Joy had said, but somehow, thinking about what could have happened didn't really make him feel scared. It was like he was thinking about someone else. He would go tomorrow.

* * *

Oh, yeah. The cubone's name is cu-bon-i, not just a different spelling of cubony. Boni like good. Yeah. Expect more notes like this as I wow you with my poor nicknaming skills. 

Next chapter: Elliot finally leaves Cianwood! And there is rejoicing among my readers who are sick of the place. Elliot does _not_ see Lugia. Caw gets mad at Elliot over something. Elliot gets rid of the mantine. Other seemingly trivial stuff transpires.


	5. Calm Losses

VulpixTrainer – You think Prowler's only _starting_ to take control of the group:) I think she's thought she was in charge from day two. There's a funny thing I've heard: A dog thinks, _you give me food and shelter. You must be a god._ A cat thinks, _you give me food and shelter. I must be a god._

Act – Well, Elliot is somewhat of a doormat. Prowler seems to know what she's doing, so he assumes she does…plus she tends to leave before he can think up a response.

I'm glad to hear you found the bit with Discord funny. The more I think about pokemon battles, the more I realize there are certain ones that have major limitations in certain environments…

Negrek – Elliot can't be freaked out or see conspiracies, because Johto is not like Kanto, because it just isn't. Therefore there are no conspiracies or any bad stuff at all. None. Johto is a place of happy fluffiness. :)

* * *

Chapter Five: Calm Losses

(x)

Elliot woke up strangely early the next morning, when the sky was light but the sun hadn't yet risen. He didn't feel tired. He got out of bed and dressed. Elliot didn't have any destination in mind, but found himself heading out of the darkened city, which in the faint morning dimness looked little different from any town in Kanto.

He walked along the beach a ways, between the water and the high rock cliffs. On the horizon the sky was glowing somewhat, not looking magical or pretty exactly but somehow profoundly reverent. Elliot sat at last on the sand, perhaps not far from where he'd first come ashore.

He didn't feel sleepy, yet suddenly his eyes opened and he found himself lying on the sand. Abruptly a paw struck the ground where he was looking for the space of an instant, a narrow, light-blue paw connected to a thin, tapered leg. Then it was gone.

Elliot sat up sharply, looking to his left where he thought the pokemon had been headed, but he didn't see anything. The sand in that direction might have been dimpled as if something had run over it, but it was so soft and uneven he couldn't see anything he could consider tracks, let alone pawprints. Had he still been dreaming? he wondered.

He brushed the sand from his cheek and sat quietly, watching the sun rise. The water was as flat and smooth as glass. Already, some of the trainers in the city were coming out onto the beach. Some of them continued past Elliot, but others stopped and, like Elliot, simply stood and watched.

"The ocean is so calm," one girl was saying quietly nearby. "The kingdra are sleeping."

"Suicune passed here," the boy next to her said. "Maybe someone called her."

"Maybe. Someone should go down to the docks. This is no day for fishing."

"A lot will go anyway."

"Someone should go down to the docks," the girl repeated. She turned from the sea to smile at her companion. "To tell them…and to remove their charm if they won't. If they won't respect Suicune, they have no right to carry them."

(x)

Elliot sat on the beach a while longer, not thinking but just staring off into space. The sun rose and he shook off his torpidness and decided it was time to get going. He tossed the Greatball out where the water met the sand, and climbed onto the mantine's back.

The ride this time was peaceful, even boring. The mantine cut through the calm water with only the faintest sound of a ripple. Elliot, on its back, remained more or less dry.

This time, with the sky cloudless and everything so clear it felt like he could see forever, when the islands came into view he recognized them as such. The unidentifiable mass he'd seen at night turned out to be a mountainous rocky structure, looking like a cross between the huge barrier Rock Tunnel went through and the caves at Seafoam.

"Hey," Elliot said, pulling a little at the mantine's shoulder to get its attention. "I want to go over there."

The mantine continued swimming.

"Mantine!" Elliot wailed, dismayed he was being ignored – again – and desperately curious about the Islands. "I want to see the Whirl Islands!"

The mantine slowed. For a moment it floated on the surface of the water, then turned in a careful, wide arc and headed towards the nearest island.

The water still looked smooth and waveless as they approached, but the mantine's swimming grew slightly more labored, as if it were fighting against a current. Despite this, they reached the islands quickly.

He tried to urge the mantine onto the beach but it ignored him, remaining floating in the shallows. Giving up, Elliot hopped into the water and ran ashore.

It wasn't comfortable to walk around in wet shoes and socks, so Elliot sat on the sand and took them off. He probably should have done that before jumping into the water, but that didn't occur to him.

It was odd. It was a beach, with sand, but…it wasn't like the beaches he'd seen before, in Kanto or Johto. The sand was a mix of colors and it was thin and uneven, covered with pebbles and stones and various debris. There were jagged boulders all around, jutting up from the ground. Elliot walked gingerly. The rocks were rough in places and a bit painful to stand on, and he worried he'd cut his feet.

Reaching the mountain, Elliot was reminded even more strongly of the entrance to Rock Tunnel, where the stone was tall, uneven, and bare of life. It was somewhat rounded but made of the same rough substance as the other rocks, and tiny irregularities caught his hands when he touched it.

Walking around it he found an opening, revealing a space inside. As his eyes adjusted he could see that the cavern was huge, going back further than he could see, and with walls on either side that faded off into the gloom. He took a step inside. It was cool, even slightly cold.

Elliot suddenly felt a burst of apprehension. He backed out of the cave and sat on the sand outside, but the feeling only faded partially before returning. He looked nervously over his shoulder at the now-black cave mouth, then back to the stark rocks between him and the water.

He wondered why the rocks were like that, so unnatural looking, so out of place. Maybe Caw would know, he thought. He pulled the Greatball off and tossed it lightly into the air.

Caw formed on the sand. The murkrow looked around sharply.

"Hi Caw," Elliot said. "Um, I was wondering if you knew-"

((What are you doing here?)) Caw demanded sharply.

"Oh, well, I-"

((You shouldn't be here. You must leave immediately. Where is-)) Caw looked around, his eyes locking on the mantine. ((Get on him and leave quickly.))

"Why?"

((These islands are dangerous,)) Caw said flatly. He turned to the mantine and squawked something that sounded a bit like ((And you! You should know better!))

The mantine let out a deep, echoing cry. It didn't sound particularly concerned.

"I don't understand, Caw. What's going on?"

The murkrow paused a moment. When he spoke, Elliot had the strange feeling he sounded like he wasn't telling the truth. ((The currents around here are unpredictable. Whirlpools can start up at any time. That's where the name comes from. And with these rocks you'll be dashed to pieces if you get caught in one. The water is somewhat calm now, you must leave before -)) He caught himself. ((- Before it changes.))

"Okay," Elliot said, recalling Caw and then picking his way around the stones to down to the water. His shoes and socks were still damp so he put them in a side pocket of his bag and climbed onto the mantine's back barefoot. It began swimming out and soon the Islands disappeared over the horizon.

(x)

Elliot made it back to Olivine in the afternoon. After getting somewhat used to Cianwood, he felt distinctly out of place in the other city, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. Stopping over in the Pokemon Center to finish drying off, he heard that the Gym was open again. That was lucky. He went out, retracing the steps he'd taken three days ago.

This time the door to the odd building was open, and Elliot entered. The inside bore a passing resemblance to the Pewter Gym back in Kanto, with a rough, rocky floor. A girl with a subtly odd hair color, a sort of pinkish brown, stood inside.

"Are you Jasmine?" Elliot asked.

The girl nodded. "Are you here for a battle?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah."

"Um…" Jasmine said. "Would three pokemon each be suitable for you?"

Elliot nodded.

"Then let's begin." She picked an oddly designed pokeball off her waist and threw it. A magnemite appeared.

Elliot remembered fighting a magnemite before, with Howler. They were weak against fire. He threw out Howler's Greatball. "Ember!"

Howler breathed in.

"Thunderbolt."

Lightning arced off of the magnemite and hit Howler before he could attack. The growlithe screamed and his forelegs gave way when the attack ended. He pushed himself back up.

"Come on, Howler! Try flamethrower!"

The attack connected squarely with the magnemite, which didn't seem to react. When the attack faded the magnemite was glowing slightly red. Elliot couldn't tell if the attack had done any damage.

"Screech."

The pokemon's magnets began to vibrate, producing a loud, high-pitched sound. Elliot wasn't bothered much by it, but Howler wailed and tried to cover his head with his paws.

"Tackle."

The magnemite slammed into Howler, sending the growlithe tumbling over the ground. He whined and got back on his feet, sending a sudden burst of flame at the other pokemon.

"That's it!" Elliot encouraged. "Try that again!"

"Spark."

Howler's attack cut off with a yelp as electricity jumped from the magnemite to him.

Fire attacks didn't seem to be working. "Um, try bite!" Elliot ordered. Obediently Howler ran at the magnemite and closed his jaws around it. They slid slightly before catching against some of the grooves in the magnemite's body. Howler growled softly, trying to force his teeth into the steel. It began to dent.

"Thundershock."

Howler was knocked back. The growlithe twitched on the ground for a moment, but then got up. He sent a fire wheel attack at the other pokemon.

"Thunderbolt."

Howler jumped to the side. The electricity missed him and scorched the floor to his right. He took a deep breath and sent another flamethrower at the magnemite, keeping it going as long as he could. Finally he stopped, gasping, but the magnemite sank to the ground, still.

"Return," Jasmine said. She picked another odd pokeball, a dark colored one, and threw it.

A colossal silver pokemon appeared, towering over Elliot and Howler. Without waiting for an order, it slapped Howler across the room with its tail.

"Return," Elliot said. Now what? How was he supposed to fight that? It looked like an onix, so he guessed it'd probably be able to use rock moves. Why else would the gym be set up the way it was otherwise? Sono and Caw were both flying types, so… "Go, Prowler!" Elliot yelled.

She appeared, sinking slightly down as she realized what she was facing. Her ears flattened back and she hissed defiantly.

"Iron tail," Jasmine said.

Prowler leapt into the air and the steelix's tail whistled past under her. She ran forward and jumped into its back, claws scrabbling over the smooth metal. The other pokemon bucked, trying to throw her off.

"Bite!" Elliot yelled.

She ignored him. She tried to focus, then slashed with glittering claws again and again, slowly opening grooves in the steel. It rolled and she jumped clear just before it would have crushed her against the ground. She circled it as it picked itself back up, then returned, scratching it over and over until she'd cut through. The steelix tried to swat her away with its tail again, but she dodged. Hooking her claws in the incision, she wrenched.

The steelix bellowed as the metal tore away. Prowler fell back, standing on three legs. Red slowly beaded on tip of her other paw. She tried to run at it again, but before she could attack it coiled around her, then squeezed. She screamed and then was sucked back into her pokeball.

Now what? Elliot wondered. Din? No, the mightyena wouldn't be any more effective than Prowler. Caw? He'd be weak against any rock moves that came up. Discord was a normal type, but he had beaten rock pokemon before – "Go!"

Discord eeped and jumped as the steelix's tail smashed down next to him.

"Defense curl, then rollout!"

Discord pressed his arms, legs and ears down against his body. The steelix took this chance to hit him with its tail, knocking him easily over Elliot's head, like a golfball. Discord landed and began to spin, then rolled at the steelix. He hit it but he was the one to be knocked back. Undaunted he launched himself at the steelix again, which rolled over, slamming him down against the floor.

Elliot had lost.

(x)

Back at the Pokecenter, Elliot reflected on the fact he didn't really mind his loss. It was weird. When he was getting ready to fight gym leaders he was worried about how he was going to win, but now that he'd lost he didn't feel upset at all. He was disappointed, and he did wish he had won, but it wasn't that big of a deal. In some ways it was kind of a relief, to have lost and then to find nothing bad happened at all.

Almost cheerfully, Elliot decided to explore the route to the north. It was too late in the day to start for the next city, but he could train his pokemon and see if he saw any miltank or other interesting pokemon.

(x)

"Hey!" said a boy, spying him from the tall grass – Elliot never walked in the stuff before, back in Kanto, and he cringed slightly at the thought of people doing so in Johto, where the equivalent looked even less inviting. "Let's fight!"

"Um, okay," Elliot said.

The other boy threw a greenish ball Elliot didn't recognize. Light coalesced into a brown pokemon with a white head and a club in one paw. A cubone.

Those were ground, weren't they? Elliot picked Sono's pokeball and tossed it.

"Flying," the boy said to himself, as if thinking. "Rock, rock…tackle, Cubbo!"

The cubone charged, jumping at the last instant so its skill collided with Sono, producing a light whump. Meanwhile the boy had pulled out his pokedex and was staring intently at the screen, eyes flicking between it and the battle.

"Sono, peck!" The spearow's beak reverberated off the skull but the force knocked it off balance and the cubone thumped backward into a sitting position on the ground. It sprang back to its feet.

"That's it…" the boy mumbled, sounding somewhat disappointed. He flipped his pokedex shut and pocketed it. "Okay Cubbo, let's try rock slide."

The cubone turned, cocking its skull inquisitively.

"Just try to hit rocks from the ground up at the spearow with your club, okay?"

It grunted agreeably. The cubone swung the rounded end of the bone it carried at a rock on the ground, whacking it. It hurtled impressively through the air and made a resounding thump when it hit, but it hadn't gone anywhere near Sono. Subsequent rocks hit various trees and one narrowly missed Elliot, but none showed any sign of getting close to Sono.

"Peck again!" Elliot ordered.

"Just whack it," the boy said, sounding frustrated. Sono was clubbed over the head.

Elliot flinched, expecting Sono to be knocked out. To his surprise the spearow regained her footing easily, not even looking a bit dazed. She squawked indignantly, ruffling her now-dusty feathers.

"Gust!"

Sono began to beat her small wings. The resulting attack was not especially strong but did manage to knock the cubone head over heels and roll it over the ground into a tree. Without being ordered Sono flew after it and began pecking at its exposed stomach while it was dazed. It clubbed her again and she pecked peevishly at its paw, making it drop the weapon. The cubone grabbed the injured hand with its other and wailed.

The boy sighed. "Cubbo, return," he said, holding up the green pokeball. The pokemon and its bone vanished. He handed some money to Elliot. "I just got it recently," he said, by way of explanation. "I've been training it, but I guess not enough."

(x)

Back at the Pokecenter, Elliot called his mother, told her he'd won the badge in Cianwood. He held the tiny thing up so she could see, and said that he would go to Ecruteak to get another one. Knowing nothing of the cities and badges of Johto, she did not ask why he wasn't getting Olivine's badge.

Merci was home. She was impressed by the badge, a design she'd never seen before, and wanted to know if he'd caught any new pokemon. He told her he had, but it was a big water type he couldn't let out at the Center.

"Catch me…" she began, "…catch me something cute, like a puffy-puff. Please?"

"Merci," their mother chided. "Your brother's busy, and besides, you've already got Fluffy."

"But Mom…"

"I don't know if there are any of those around here," Elliot said. "I'll see, okay?"

"Okay!" Merci chirped.

Elliot said goodbye to the two of them and hung up. Then he called Gabriel. He explained he was about to go north and promised to try to find a miltank, and said he'd caught a mantine and would they like it? Gabriel said it would be useful, and the pokemon was transferred to the lab.

"Oh, yeah," Elliot said. He fumbled with his bag for a minute and retrieved the small amber stone. He held it up in front of the phone's screen. "I got this-"

Gabriel jumped up, half lunging at the screen. His image loomed huge in Elliot vision. "What! That's-"

Elliot jumped at the motion. "I'm sorry, I…" He wasn't entirely sure what he was apologizing for.

Gabriel sat back and took a deep breath. "I'm just surprised," he said, sounding like he was struggling to stay calm. "Those are very – very rare. Where did you get something like that?"

"In Pewter."

Gabriel started to jump up, but caught himself midway through the motion and sat back. "Pewter," he repeated. "Elliot, I can't see well enough over the monitor. Tell me, the thing inside that, does it have anything that looks like clear wings?"

"Clear wings?"

"Something that's a different color than the rest."

"Um…" Elliot peered into the stone. It was hard to tell. "Um, I think so."

Gabriel let out a sigh. Elliot realized he must have been holding his breath. "I can't believe this," he said, sounding amazed. "I – that was supposed to have been destroyed. My god."

"I – I didn't steal –" Elliot started to say.

"I know. How did you get it?"

"Someone gave it to me A-" Elliot stopped, not sure if he should tell. Gabriel didn't seem to notice.

"This is an absolute godsend," the older boy said. "The only known one of those was supposed to have been destroyed during a break-in at the Pewter museum. If that's it…"

"Um, what is it, anyway?"

"An extinct insect. It's a parasitic creature that sucked blood for sustenance." Elliot shuddered. He was glad something like that was extinct. "If the blood can be extracted, assuming the DNA wasn't too damaged, it might actually be possible to revive an extinct pokemon! Scientists at Cinnabar have been working on some fossils but they aren't having much luck. This – this might actually _work_!"

"Um…" A large part of Gabriel's explanation had gone over his head. "Should I send it to you, then?"

"Yes!"

(x)

Elliot ate supper, which, like all his meals so far in Johto, was of something not bad but weird enough to prevent him from eating it quickly. He finished and relaxed in one of the chairs, not yet tired enough to go to sleep.

A group of trainers were sitting near the television. It was on the news.

"Five fishing boats have failed to return, three from Olivine and two from Cianwood," the announcer was saying. None of the listeners looked particularly concerned. Elliot noticed they each had a small stone hanging around their neck, like the one the girl had back in Cianwood. "Despite the clear weather no search operation has been undertaken, due to mechanical problems and an inability to locate certain crewmembers."

"There were only five that went out," said one of the children idly, his fingers playing with the stone. "You'd think he'd mention that. Makes it sound like others actually came back."

"Yeah, well, it's not like you'd expect someone like him to know anything. Probably they just got a report about five boats missing. Like they'd care about the actual situation."

"Well," said a third one, "it's not like it really matters."

"Yeah."


	6. Mike

This chapter's somewhat short, sorry. At least it's on time (barely…).

Keleri – Yes, it really wouldn't be too good for Elliot's peace of mind to get an aerodactyl. Then again, I've never really thought the practice of handing out rare pokemon and items to any kid who happened to barge into your house made a lot of sense, and that goes doubly for anything a researcher claims to want to study, so maybe not.

Blue Phoenix – Strangeness? Whatever could you mean? And the cubone are totally normal. Really. Nothing odd about them. Nothing at all. They're just there. By coincidence. Yeah, coincidence.

SP – Thank you, fixed!

I don't know if I'd really say the mantine was that great. It was a good fighter in the water, but Elliot's battles tend to be on land, so unless it can do the magical floating of water types in stadium and colosseum, well…and yes, I think he'll be able to get it back if he needs it later (it's not like Bill's going to dissect it…OR IS HE:) Well, okay, no, he isn't.)

* * *

Chapter Six: Mike

(x)

Elliot slept fitfully, waking often during the night, although when he woke in the morning he could not remember if his dreams had been bad. He'd wound up sleeping late and he dressed quickly, ate, and left.

He stopped at the Pokemart to buy supplies. That, at least, was little different than in Kanto. He stepped outside and started north, coming across a pokemon battle.

Two trainers, a boy and a girl, were fighting in the square. The battle had attracted a fair amount of onlookers, probably because of the novelty.

The two were attempting to fight with the same pokemon species, identical cubone. Neither had any distinguishing characteristics, not even, Elliot realized as they butted heads, a slight difference in size. They also seemed not to know any moves beyond the most basic, so the trainers were often both giving the same orders.

The trainers clearly couldn't tell whose was whose, as periodically one or the other would yell out, "Cubone? Which are you?" Elliot, like the other gawkers, paused to watch the comedy.

Finally, one of the cubone collapsed. The two trainers looked at each other uncertainly. "Cubone?" asked the girl after a moment. The standing one trotted over to her, and the other boy recalled his pokemon.

With the diversion over, Elliot continued on his way, heading back up to the route he'd started exploring the day before. This time, he walked past the field area where it was a mix of short and long grass, up to where the forest began.

It was an odd sort of forest. It wasn't anything like the strange, sickly place he'd seen in the northern mountains of Kanto, but it also wasn't – quite, at least – the same as home. The trees were thick and appropriately spaced, but a bit closer together, a bit less regular, and a bit more gnarled, more like old park trees than forest trees. It didn't disturb him, something perhaps odd in itself. The difference was subtle and unthreatening, like the Safari Zone had been, and he found it interesting instead.

Remembering that rare pokemon tended not to be around the main path, he left it and began to trek through the forest. The irregularity of the trees intensified slightly as he got further and further from the main path, but they still bore no resemblance to the utterly wrong mountain forest and he still saw nothing problematic. His progress through was unhindered, and the most remarkable thing he found was that the bushes he very occasionally encountered seemed less compact than usual.

Elliot saw a snubbull, but it fled before he could catch it. That was slightly odd too. He wasn't used to pokemon fleeing instead of fighting. When Caw had warned him the mantine would he'd passed it off as just being something about water pokemon, and even then, it didn't seem to have made much of an effort to escape. But then, maybe snubbull were just especially timid pokemon. Like nidorina.

Dropping the train of thought sharply, Elliot continued on. The other pokemon he saw acted more normally. He thought they might have been slightly more skittish than he remembered before, but then, that was probably his imagination. He didn't try to catch any of them, and so couldn't have said if they, like the snubbull, would also have tried to run.

It grew late and Elliot hadn't seen any miltank. He kept going without thinking for a bit, then realized he'd need to set up camp. He didn't want to be out in the dark in a new place. In the deepening light the gnarls of the trees he'd formerly had no problem with looked newly threatening, and he hurriedly set up camp. It was getting dim so he didn't want to bother collecting firewood.

Elliot released his pokemon and fed four, with Prowler and Din spurring his food as usual and heading off on their own. "Be careful," he told them when they left, "we're not in Kanto anymore."

Prowler had seemed unconcerned. ((I came to Kanto,)) she said, walking into the growing darkness. ((This is not the first new place.))

(x)

The two had returned by the time Elliot woke up. They were sleeping soundly. Prowler's eyes opened drowsily when she heard him move, but it took Din a moment and some nudges from Prowler to do the same. They didn't bother to get up.

"Hi," Elliot said. It occurred to him that since they'd gone exploring, they might have seen the miltank he wanted. "Hey, have you seen any miltank?"

Din's ears pricked attentively. ((I heard something say that,)) she said. Elliot took this to mean she'd heard a miltank's call.

"Really?" he asked. "Could you find me one?"

((I think so,)) Din said, sounding slightly uncertain.

((Why do you want that thing?)) Prowler asked.

"I want to catch it."

((Why do you want that thing?)) she repeated, as if he hadn't answered her question.

"Is there something bad about them?"

Din piped up. ((Prowler said, don't eat those things. They're like the growlithe. I didn't think they smelled that much like him, though.))

((They are strange-looking and made of soft fatless flesh,)) Prowler said, her elaboration less than clear. ((They are like the pokemon that live behind the wooden webs near human buildings. They do not look like the things I know lived with tauros.))

"Okay…" Elliot said, having little idea of what she meant. "So, um, anyway, I want to catch one for somebody. Can you help?"

((Din should be the one,)) Prowler said. ((It shouldn't be hard. She needs practice.)) She paused a moment. ((Put me out if something goes wrong,)) she added.

(x)

Once Elliot was ready to go, Din started off with her usual enthusiasm. Elliot followed, wondering a bit at why Prowler hadn't wanted to do this. That was what he had taken her request to mean. He knew she didn't like Howler, although her explanations had never seemed to make any sense to him, and he thought she probably wouldn't want to fight a pokemon she said was like Howler.

By the third hour, Elliot had also begun to wonder if Din had any idea of where they were going. Remembering what Prowler had said about her needing practice was less than reassuring.

Suddenly she took off, bounding around treetrunks and then finally tossing herself through a light hedge and disappearing. Elliot sped up, stumbling slightly as he tried to follow over the uneven ground. He pushed past the strangely yielding bush and saw Din struggling with a pink thing that looked like the miltank in a small meadow. It – or she, he supposed, remembering they were supposed to all be female as the miltank out a distinctly unfeminine bellow – did not seem to be putting up much of a fight. Din's teeth had sunk into one side and drawn blood. Elliot tossed a pokeball as another pokemon shoved into the clearing. It snorted angrily, pawed the ground with one hoof and charged.

Din yelped, scrambling out of the tauros' path. It turned and charged again. The pokemon ran around the clearing, the tauros luckily taking no notice of Elliot, who would never have been able to outrun it. Din stumbled. The tauros bore done on her and Elliot's breath caught in his throat. At the last instant she vanished, reappearing a second later to the tauros' right and then tackling it. The force knocked it down, off its feet. It bellowed in horror as its side hit the ground, narrow legs kicking helplessly, and Din dove for it, biting into its stomach. Elliot tossed another pokeball as she pulled at the soft flesh, and it was caught as well.

"Not bad," said a voice. Elliot jumped and turned towards the sound. Another boy was standing there. His eyes flickered between the two pokeballs on the ground and the six around Elliot's waist. "You collecting?" he asked.

"Yes," Elliot started to say. He thought suddenly of the Safari Zone and PCs filled with oddish and felt the need to explain. "I mean, I'm collecting them for someone. They wanted them."

The boy nodded. "Your pokedex is beeping," he pointed out mildly, and Elliot realized it was. Quickly he opened it and sent the two into storage where Gabriel could retrieve them.

"Hey," the boy said. "Is that a mightyena?"

Elliot nodded. "Yeah, her name's Din."

"You're from Kanto?"

"Yeah," Elliot said again. "Why'd you think so?"

"Poochyena were given out by Hoenn Alliance buildings, and those were, there weren't many built here. So if you've got one, you probably either got it from a building in Kanto or a trainer there. It follows that someone like that'd be from Kanto."

"I guess – what do you mean, not built?"

"Nothing really. Just that Johto wasn't as willing as Kanto to start up an 'alliance'. We've got enough going on, yanno?" He shrugged like it didn't matter. "Anyways, I'm Mike. What's your name?"

"I'm Elliot."

"Well, Elliot, I'm headed up to Ecruteak. You?"

"Me too."

"Cool. Why don't we go together?"


	7. Pokemon Values

Blue Phoenix – Why on earth won't you believe me when I say there's nothing going on? Sheesh. People are so mistrustful.

Keleri, Negrek – Editing snafu. I was trying to find the best way of saying it, decided what I had was too strong, altered it, and screwed up with an extra space. Fixed now.

Act – Long review, yay! No, there wasn't any intentional 'helmet theme' for the weird pokemon, although maybe my subconscious knows something I don't.

Merci's six, she just talks like that sometimes because it's a joke of sorts, word play. She probably doesn't really feel that at ease with Elliot since she only talks to him occasionally, so she acts less natural than usual.

Well... - No, I don't not update because I want more reviews first…er, does that make sense or are there too many negatives? I was just swamped last week, sorry. (Plus, I just had trouble with this chapter, short as it is…)

* * *

Chapter Seven: Pokemon Values

(x)

"Okay, Howler, use – hey!" The snubbull darted into the tall grass and disappeared.

"You don't just expect it to wait around for you?" Mike asked.

"But why do they keep running away?" Elliot was getting frustrated, and his companion's attitude wasn't helping.

"I don't know. Because it didn't want to fight, or it though it'd lose, or it was worried you'd catch it. Don't pokemon run away in Kanto?"

"Well, no," Elliot said. "Sometimes. If you're chasing pokemon by yourself they'll run, but if you'd got a pokemon out they fight."

"That's bizarre. Your pokemon are nuts then."

Elliot disagreed, but he didn't know how to explain. It just was. Even pokemon he'd chased himself in Kanto, that ran – even they didn't act like the snubbull. It was…like it was really trying to escape.

It disturbed him. It was another thing that was just off, somehow, not right. They continued on silently.

(x)

Mike was fourteen, three years older than Elliot. He'd started off with an ekans, now evolved into an arbok, and had been given a heracross as a going-away present from his older brother. The two were huge, powerful creatures that half Elliot's team shied away from, although they didn't seem interested in anything beyond their supper.

He had three others, a tauros that seemed slightly uneasy and lacked the same intense vitality of the rest of his team, a hypno, and a somewhat belligerent marowak, who was waving his bone threateningly towards Prowler. She hissed back almost absently, not moving from her place by the campfire.

"Are cubone and marowak popular?" Elliot asked. "I've seen a bunch."

Mike snorted. "Getting that way. All the ones you've seen so far are low-level, right?"

"I guess."

"That's because they're just a recent fad. People haven't had a chance to raise them." Mike's voice was dismissive. "My Warclub's not part of that, though. I got him as a marowak, because they were common where I started out and because I thought he looked strong. Building a team with the new fad pokemon is something only stupid city girls would do."

Elliot felt uncertain, not sure if he'd said something offensive.

"So what's Kanto like?" Mike asked. "It any different there?"

"Yeah," Elliot said. "A lot."

"Like what?"

Elliot stumbled over his words. "It's like – everything's similar, but it's all different. And it's something small, but really big at the same time somehow. Like – these trees. Ours are more regular. And it doesn't seem like that's any big difference, but it is. We'd never - in a whole forest, you'd never find a single tree like these ones. And the houses, they're all different too. A lot different. It's –" Elliot broke off. "It's hard to explain," he said, staring into the fire.

(x)

The town they came to was small. It was jarring still, but Elliot gritted his teeth and tried to pretend nothing was wrong.

"You okay?" Mike asked. "You look like someone hit you over the head with a bat."

"I'm f-fine," Elliot stammered, narrowly avoiding walking into a signpost. "Which – which way's the Pokecenter?"

Mike checked his pokegear. "This way," he said, pulling on Elliot as they walked. It might have taken a long time to get there, or a very short one.

Inside, Elliot relaxed immediately. The two handed over their pokemon.

"What was that?" Mike asked.

"What?"

"You know what I mean," he said.

"It's nothing. It's just…it's just…" Elliot trailed off. He didn't know how to say it. It wasn't scary, not anymore. It was just…transitioning, between one thing and another. The town was just so different. "After being in the forest, I don't know, everything seemed…like there was too much going on."

"Doesn't make any sense to me. A place is a place." He shrugged. "I'm going to go shop. You going to stay here?"

Elliot nodded. "Just for a little while," he said.

(x)

Elliot did head out in the end, after perhaps just thirty minutes. Outside, he found it wasn't half as bad as he'd been expecting it to be. He just needed to pause and look around himself for a minute, and he was okay. Maybe, he thought, the reason he'd been so disoriented was because he had tried to rush in.

The town was smaller than the two Johto cities he'd seen so far, with fewer people and a more uniform, if every bit as alien, design to it. It wasn't too bad. He walked along the sidewalk, seeing buildings that at least were modern seeming, with normal, hard walls and glass windows.

He came to a square in the center of the town. There was a crowd clustered there, what seemed to be a pokemon standing on a platform in the center. Elliot started over to see what that was about.

The group, Elliot noticed, was made up of adults. He thought he saw a couple older teens, but that was all. It looked like there was an auction going on – Elliot had only seen those on TV, but he thought that was it. There weren't many different pokemon, though. There were a lot of flaaffy, a slowbro, an ampharos with dulled fur, a couple old-looking growlithe, a scruffy wigglytuff, a bunch of small miltank, and a few raichu who looked as aged as the growlithe.

One by one, they were led to the front. Some of them were bought and others moved into a second pen, mainly the flaaffy and miltank. The bidding wasn't anything like he'd seen in movies, with everyone yelling out higher and higher prices, and Elliot felt a bit disappointed.

None of the pokemon interested him, and none of the people were doing anything interesting, so Elliot continued on.

Back at the Pokecenter later, he asked Mike what had been going on.

"This area produces a lot of pokemon-related products," he said. "Which winds up producing a lot of extra pokemon."

"What do you mean?"

"Like mareep wool. People have huge herds of mareep, and they charge them with electricity to boost their production, which makes them more likely to evolve. But when mareep evolve into flaaffy, they only have a fraction of the wool, and the fiber quality changes too. Flaaffy wool's used in some things, but it's not needed in much and it's too expensive to raise for it to be a big industry anyway. Sometimes they'll be kept to take care of the herd, but you only need one or two for that, and besides, they aren't half as good at it as raichu."

"What about all the miltank?"

Mike was focused on eating his sandwich. "Miltank produce a higher quality milk if they've just given birth," he said.

"So trainers buy them, then?"

"Not usually. Pokemon like them, they've never fought or anything. Some people will pick them up, but they're really not much. And the experienced pokemon that do get sold at things like that are herd protectors who've gotten too old. They're usually bought as pets, not fighters." He shrugged, an abrupt, almost violent gesture.

* * *

Next chapter: So is Johto safer than Kanto? Or…


	8. Dangerous

Sorry this chapter's late…I really need to put more effort into staying on schedule. And it's not even a long chapter…pretty short, actually.

Blue Phoenix – Why does there need to be a secret explanation for why the snubbull are running? Can't they just not want to fight? Don't you trust what Mike said? Aren't my characters always totally honest?

Negrek – Ack, mistakes…I need to do a better job of proofreading, I guess.

* * *

Chapter Eight: Dangerous

(x)

It was late afternoon. Mike and Elliot could see the tops of buildings not too far away. It wouldn't be long before they entered the town. They were walking along a wide, well traveled dirt path, with leafy trees on either side, shading the road.

They came upon a girl and a cubone, who were engaged in a fight with a rattata. By the time they reached her the rattata had collapsed and was lying on the ground, breathing weakly. The girl offered the cubone a berry and then looked at them.

"I challenge you to a battle," she said importantly. She looked like she was about eleven, the same age as Elliot.

Mike looked decidedly unimpressed. "Why don't you fight her, Elliot?" he said.

"Um, sure," Elliot said. He grabbed Din's Premierball and tossed it. "Go, Din!"

Din barked, her tail wagging excitedly. She shifted on her feet, looking playful.

"Bone club!"

"Tackle, Din!"

Din dipped her head to hit it in the chest, knocking it away. It rolled back, stopped and sat up.

The cubone wailed.

Din paused and looked back at Elliot, her ears flattening guiltily.

"Cubone, bone club!" the girl said again, sounding annoyed. The cubone got back onto its feet, approached Din, and then hit her over the head. Din went down.

The girl grinned. "Now use magnitude!"

The cubone struck the ground with its bone. Nothing happened. Din, ignoring this, stood up again, shaking her head slightly to clear it.

"Bite!"

Din grabbed it in her jaws. She wasn't bearing down but blood spurted into her mouth. The cubone screamed. Not knowing what to do, she dropped it.

The cubone remained on the ground, breathing painfully. The girl sighed and recalled it, then handed over some of her money to Elliot.

(x)

They entered the Pokemon Center and handed their pokemon to the Nurse Joy. It was nearly time for the meal to be served, so there was no point in heading out again after their pokemon were healed. The two sat on one of the couches.

A short distance away a group of trainers were sitting around the TV, one kneeling next to it and changing the channels, the remote apparently missing.

" – but, do you really think you'll be able to defeat –" Elliot heard. And then, " – terribly sorry, ma'am, but there's no sign – ACTIVATE! – magikarp make this journey every – I won't miss this time, Jim, I – and the cure – we can do it, right Charma –"

She stopped on the news. " – yearly tournament. But in a bizarre twist, the body of man involved in the murder of the third-place trainer and theft of his rare sableye was just discovered. He was severely mutilated, with chunks removed from parts of his body, as well as both eyes. The cause of death is believed to have been from shock. As you can see from these pho –"

"Hey!" another trainer shouted, standing and taking a step towards them. "Turn that off!" The girl, looking somewhat shaken, did so without argument.

(x)

"I wonder if I could catch that…" Elliot said thoughtfully, looking at a reward poster for a wild ninetales that was reported to be raiding farms and small towns in the area.

"Don't," Mike said flatly. "Those are dangerous."

"What do you mean?"

Mike gave him an odd look. "You don't think they'd be paying that much –" He jerked his thumb at the poster. " – for something that anyone could pick up? Those are for professionals."

"But –"

"Look. That ninetales on the poster is a strong pokemon and a rare one. Normally trainers would pay to get a chance to catch something like that. So why do you think they're offering the reward? Because except for people who've got pokemon trained for it, going after one of those is impossible, if you're lucky. And if you're unlucky, well, you do find it and you don't come back. For something to have a bounty, it's gotta be dangerous enough normal trainers can't deal with it, and it's got to have caused so much trouble that leaving it alone isn't an option. Not the sort of thing you want to get involved in."

"But my persian, I went and caught her and she was on a poster," Elliot said, not sure how to argue against Mike's reasoning but certain it was still wrong.

He shrugged. "Maybe it's different in Kanto, like the way you say your pokemon don't run away. But here, that's how it is."

(x)

Mike decided to leave Elliot shortly before they reached Ecruteak, saying he wanted to stop at a small village that was nearby.

"Hey," Mike said suddenly. "Listen. One thing."

Elliot paused.

"You shouldn't trust anyone my age. Stay away from them, okay?" He smiled, as if in apology for the advice, and walked away into the darkness of the forest.

_Listen, don't trust anyone my age, understand?_

Why, Elliot wanted to cry out after him, but he was afraid of the answer.


	9. Ecruteak

Whee! Finally updated again…

Suicune, Raikou and Entei are a headache. As a group, they seem like dogs, but then you look at each one and individually, cats, totally cats. But cats and sustained running…it's like an oxymoron but more irking. Cats don't run. They move very fast for three seconds. Then they bite if you haven't taken the hint because they're too lazy to keep running.

* * *

Chapter Nine: Ecruteak

(x)

It was like stepping back in time.

The buildings were wooden and ancient, bearing a resemblance to the pharmacy back in Cianwood. The roads between them were plain dirt. It was unreal, imaginary. Elliot felt lost, as if he was watching it on a television screen. He wandered around, staring. Off to the north he saw a tower, blackened and crumbling. Was that the burned tower he'd heard about?

He passed in front of one building, seeing a pair of wizened adults entering. Curious, he read the wooden sign by the door: _Ecruteak Dance Theater_. He wasn't interested in girly stuff like that, so he kept going.

The Pokemon Center he came to was the same as always – exactly the same, standing out from its surroundings like a houndoom among mareep. Utterly unfitting, utterly out of place.

It was also real, unlike the rest of the strange city, and Elliot hurried towards it.

(x)

Elliot ordered the only thing on the menu he recognized, grilled meat of some kind, looking nervously at the strange things the other customers were eating – a rolled omelet with what looked like rice inside, weird round dumpling-things on sticks, what seemed to be green vegetables covered in a thin wafer, various noodles mixed with bits of mushroom and other things, pancakes with ketchup…

He'd headed out to a restaurant because he'd arrived after lunch had been served at the Pokecenter. Now he wondered, eyeing his neighbor's plate of what he remembered was called sushi on TV anxiously, if it might have been a better idea to eat the dried food he had with him rather than try to buy a meal. This place was freaky.

His own food, when it appeared, proved to be more or less normal. It was cut into small pieces and skewered on a wooden stick like the dumplings, and it had a weird flavor to it, but it was recognizable and didn't taste that much different than what he ate back home. Reassured, he began eating.

"…girl selling fancy 'stones' around, I've seen her," said a man in the booth near Elliot.

"Think you could find her again?"

A barking laugh, utterly humorless. "Come on. This isn't the first time. I didn't just decide afterward that maybe, come to think of it, I should say something. Don't act like I'm stupid."

"Point taken. Then: how long before she leaves?"

"A while. Intends on staying here until she gets a buyer. Thinks – doesn't quite realize what Ecruteak is. One of those insulated Gold brats, thinks she's a hotshot because she's peddling the stuff and hasn't been busted yet." Pause. "Should he be told?"

"He's done his part. She wasn't the killer, just profiting. We'll handle it."

"Yeah. Enough to do as is."

One stood, headed out silently.

(x)

When Elliot was done, he headed to find the Gym. He found it eventually, a large, aged building, almost plain.

And, unfortunately, closed.

First Olivine, and now this! It wasn't fair, Elliot thought. What was he supposed to do now? Wait around and hope the gym leader came back? He sighed, looking northward. Well, he could take the time to check out that tower he'd seen now…

But as Elliot was heading back, a storm broke out and he had to hurry back to the Pokemon Center, completely drenched by the downpour. The weather had been bad lately. It had already rained twice just in the time between Mike leaving and getting to Ecruteak, and now it was raining again. And this on top of the missing gym leader. His luck was horrible, Elliot thought blackly.

The other trainers inside were not in much better moods. The storm had come up suddenly, going from droplets to downpour in seconds, and a lot of them had been caught by surprise. The girls seemed especially unhappy. Many of them were occupied in trying to dry their hair, which, while not of exceptional lengths, still held more water than the shorter haircuts of the boys and, in some cases, made trying to change into fresh clothing pointless until it was dry. A few of the girls who had gone with the most practical, boyish haircuts looked somewhat self-satisfied at the situation.

After Elliot changed, he settled down in one of the chairs by a window to wait the storm out. Around him, other trainers grumbled. The gym, the weather…

Off in a corner to his right, not far, a group of trainers clustered. Elliot didn't know why they attracted his attention. They were plainly dressed, in dull colors, like, he realized, the two adults going into the dance theater had been. It wasn't anything unusual. Trainers dressed in all sorts of ways. But seeing them together…something about it stood out. Their clothing was on the outer edge of the normal spectrum, only unremarkable because it was so uninteresting, and they were all dressed the same. They also lacked the irritated look of the other trainers, seeming almost mature, patient. They were talking quietly, discussing, like many, the weather. But then their conversation turned odd. Their words were just on the edge of his hearing, so perhaps it was only his imagination.

"…Olivine?"

"I…more Cianwood, but…usual…it's never just one…both…as always."

"Should…"

"Don't know…get involved."

"…should be checked out at least," said a boy more firmly. "Especially if…suicune…"

"What is…" a girl said. "…out there. Anywhere." Then: "They don't know, though, do they? That…"

"No."

"…as specters…manifestations, it's happened before."

"An omen?"

"…a lot of power. Lugia?"

"We should go. It should be checked out," repeated the boy. "If it's causing this much of an effect."

"Could it really be…"

"It should be checked out," repeated the boy a second time.

They were silent.

(x)

Elliot had heard of the burned tower even in Kanto. He hadn't heard anything beyond that, but another trainer in the center, a boy from Goldenrod, had been happy to explain it over supper, served earlier than usual, probably because the Center's joy was hoping to get everyone distracted from the weather.

Long ago, the boy had said, Ecruteak had been the city of legends. There were two great towers, on to the northwest and one to the northeast, and there lived two gods of Johto, the bird of sun and the bird of sea. (Elliot thought his companion had adopted an overly dramatic tone, but he didn't say anything.) And around the town sprinted the three runners, the protectors of the city, and all was well.

Then something happened, no one knows what. But it is known that a great fire broke out in the northwest tower, and that in it perished the three guardians of Ecruteak. The sun bird came down and revived them, but all left Ecruteak, never to return. The eastern forest advanced, engulfing the second tower.

"And then what?" Elliot had asked.

"What do you mean, 'and then what?' That's the end of the story."

"But what happened?"

"That."

"And what else?"

"Nothing. The gods of legend, if they ever were here, left, forest stands in the part of the city where the northeast tower was, and the northwest tower remains in the other corner, burned black. That's all there is."

Elliot found the story hugely unsatisfying. What sort of a story was it without an ending or explanation?

And so, the next morning, he headed out to the remains of the tower he'd seen when he entered Ecruteak. Closer up, he found there was nothing preventing him from entering and, feeling almost obligated, he went to do so.

He paused before the door, remembering the strange building in Cinnabar, also burned by some earlier disaster, also left for some inscrutable reason, and, he remembered, frightening. But the story had been tantalizing, mysterious. What was special about the tower? Why had there been so many legendaries in the city? What had caused the disaster, and why had the three pokemon been there? And why hadn't they been able to escape? And why had they left afterward? And what was up with the bit about the forest at the end, what did that have to do with anything? You could just walk through it if you wanted to get to the tower, so why was it so important? And what was the second tower, anyway?

Elliot, if he thought about it, didn't exactly expect to find answers in the burned ruins of the tower. Still, seeing it would put the story into a sort of context beyond a few simple sentences that barely seemed connected to each other.

He touched the side of the doorframe with one hand, the blackened, half-charcoal wood smooth and cool, as if polished, then stepped inside.

He had felt the beginnings of nervousness when he stood in the doorway, but once he looked inside that vanished. The burnished, black-streaked wood was almost pretty, and the rays of light slanting down through gaps in the wood lent it a quiet, almost peaceful look. It seemed closer to a natural cave than a haunted, ruined building in feel.

Were there ghosts here? he wondered after thinking that. He remembered the things in the Pokemon Tower at Lavender. But those hadn't been real, had they? They'd had something to do with the rockets. Real ghosts were like the one he'd given Anthony, playful and kinda weird. Maybe, he thought, he should catch one himself. It'd be fun to have one around.

He walked carefully, the floor uneven, with gaps in places. There seemed to be a level below the one he was on – the basement, he thought abruptly, chiding himself for his moment of unease. He was so in the mindset of expecting something bizarre and sinister every time he saw something new he wasn't thinking clearly. He thought for a moment of trying to find his way down, then decided to keep exploring the level he was on. He clambered over fallen timber to various areas, trying to imagine what the place had once looked like. Since he wasn't clear on what the building had been used for, the effort failed.

Hopping down from one pile of ancient debris, there was a strangely quiet cracking sound as the ground vanished from under his feet.

(x)

"Ow…" Elliot said some time later, finding himself lying on his back. A square foot or so of twice filtered sunlight was coming down on top of him. As Elliot's eyes adjusted, he realized he must be in the basement level he'd seen from above. He was lying on dirt and tiny fragments of wood, almost powdered. Touching one of the larger pieces, about two inches, he found it crumbled in his hand like old paper.

He stood up, looked around. To his left was a steep drop, beyond which was a second patch of light with what looked sort of like stairs. He didn't think he'd have trouble jumping down to get there, but climbing back up wouldn't be possible. And to his right were two large rocks set on the ground, both as tall as he was. Rolling his bruised shoulders somewhat gingerly, he decided to get a better look at them.

They were statues, carved versions of the trio in the story. They must have been forgotten down here after the fire, he thought. It looked like there was a third statue as well, but it had broken. Looking more closely, he realized the statue on his right was of Entei. And the one on the left was Raikou. The third must have been Suicune, he thought, bending down to seem the pile of stone.

That was odd. The bottom of the statue, the backs of the paws and lower legs, were still discernable. But they looked hollow. Like a chocolate wigglytuff, he thought. He remembered a lot of statues were made like that, like the weird looking lawn stantler a neighbor put out in her yard, although he didn't remember if anyone had ever explained why. It wasn't anything important, though.

He reached out and patted the raikou's muzzle, feeling the intricate detail, then turned to go.

Behind him, in the darkness, a hairline crack formed where he had touched.


	10. Berries and Battles

Finally, I'm updating again. I'm going to try to stick to the once-a-week schedule again, but school's so…insane this year, so I don't know for sure if it'll work out. Sorry sorry sorry, everyone, I know it's been a while.

allokai – You're right, lucky overhearings tend to happen a lot. I try to avoid it, but...often there's no other way of working it in. If it makes this seem more workable, remember the stuff Elliot tends to overhear isn't super secret plans or anything. The people aren't drawing attention to themselves, but they're not really hiding away either, and I don't think they'd care if they knew some eleven year old trainer happened to overhear. And, at least it's better than 'mysterious people mysteriously decide to go up to hero and mysteriously explain everything about their (formerly) mysterious plan', right? But yeah. I will try to watch it.

As to the cats/dogs/beasts/creatures/things, well, when I first saw them I thought 'dog' but later people talked about it and several people pointed out each one looked like a cat. Entei is a lion, Raikou a tiger, and Suicune a leopard. And once it was pointed out, that's how they looked to me each time I got a good look at them. But then when I see them together in a smaller picture, suddenly they look like dogs again. So I decided to just make up my own title for them. (Which is probably bad in itself...)

SunLight – Hello again! As to where the legendaries are – kids in Cianwood claimed Suicune was there recently (although kids in Ecruteak seem less credulous), and there are statues of Raikou and Entei down in the burned tower. Beyond that...sora wa himitsu desu:is killed for using Japanese:

Act – Gah! Fixed, thanks for pointing out. It's funny, doubled stuff seems like it'd be so obvious, but when I proofread I have a bad habit of skimming, so...

Negrek – I like your idea, it's interesting. A Johto version of the Aqua/Magma Sapphire/Ruby split…of course, it'd be much too easy for poor Elliot if there were only two groups he needed to keep track of.

MorriganFearn whose review is on the first story but says she's reading this one and who really, really deserves a response – Your review was wonderful, detailed, and made me feel very bad because you put so much effort into working out the title. So, um, you were sorta on the right track but wandered off. I'd tell you where, but you actually got a bit too close for comfort there, so...(gah, even that's a hint, isn't it?). Anyway, it probably won't make much sense yet if you do work it out. The idea should start getting worked into conversations in the story shortly. Also, I'm supremely happy you noticed something about the different pokemon people have.

And the poem was very cool, strangely appropriate-ish and makes me want to find some way of incorporating it.

And now that you're all ready to kill me for wasting a whole page on talking to people, on (finally) with the story!

* * *

Chapter 10: Berries and Battles

(x)

Between the small town Elliot was leaving and the main route to the next was a large grassy park-like area for trainers. He decided to stop, reasoning that his pokemon hadn't been out to play with other pokemon for a while.

A girl with two pink-striped white balls noticed him. "Cool," she said. "You've got one." At his blank look, she said. "A Premierball. From Hoenn Alliance."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Which one?"

"I got a poochyena," Elliot said, opening up the Premierball and then the rest. "She's evolved now."

"Wow, cool!" the girl said, bending over Din, whose ears bent back uncertainly. "The picture really doesn't look half this impressive. Fierce without being scary, somehow." She pointed to a large bird on her left. "I got a taillow back when I went, so it's evolved now. But I only just got my second one recently, so it's still a poochyena." She grinned. "I'm trying to find someone with the third one, zigzagoon, who wants to trade, so I can have all three."

Elliot thought suddenly of Mike. _And those were, there weren't many built here_. But the girl was chatting away about Goldenrod and murkrow like she was a native. Mike could've made a mistake, though. The places weren't very common. Especially in someplace as insanely, dizzyingly diverse as Johto, where walking between different areas was like going between worlds. So, Elliot reasoned, Hoenn Alliance buildings might just be in certain places. Nothing really important about it.

The poochyena barked and trotted over to sniff Din, who stood stiffly, not sure how to deal with it. It had a dim, inexplicable familiar feel to it, but more strongly, in her memories and experiences, it was purely alien, and all the more disturbing for the other feeling. She whined softly, backing up.

It might have moved to follow her, not understanding, but Prowler stepped between them, rubbing quickly against Din's neck and then turning to the puppy. It barked again, scattered baby words, sniffed one forepaw, and pounced clumsily on it. Elliot tensed, but she made no motion to swat at it. She bent instead and licked the top of its head, smoothing mussed fur. She looked remote suddenly. Resigned, Elliot thought.

Later, after they had left and walked and finally camped, he asked her about that. He fumbled for words, saying finally that it looked like penance, for the way she looked there, as if obligated, choosing.

She understood the meaning somehow, but it was not for her. ((No,)) she said. ((I – do not think of things like that.))

"But-" Elliot started.

((It is just what I must do,)) she said placidly. ((It has nothing to do with me.)) This seemed contradictory, and Elliot wondered if she was lying.

"Why?"

((Because it is how things are. It is not important to you.))

"Did something happen?"

((Things always happen. It is not why, Elliot.)) She looked at him for a moment. ((Besides,)) she said, perhaps meaning to explain why she denied the word he chose so completely, ((actions cannot be made up for anyway.))

(x)

"Ow!" Elliot whined, sitting on the ground. He had gone off the path a bit to a berry tree, following an odd, thin strip of brown dirt, similar to the main road but somehow different, bare, uneven and worn. It reminded him of the odd path in the odd forest to the north of Kanto, above Pewter. There was a hardness to the ground, rounded stones with their tops exposed in the dirt and woody ridges of tree roots that jutted across the path, creating a series of irregular, slanted steps.

It was on one of those steps, the dirt sloping away from the rounded tree root at a mild slope, that Elliot's foot had slipped, his ankle gave under him, and he found himself in his present situation.

His ankle was fine, just slightly sore. Elliot shifted his weight gingerly on and off it, deciding he was not that gravely injured.

Elliot had probably done this before, sometime back between his first steps and his current age, but the event was so minor he had forgotten. He did not know that the soreness was nothing.

Limping exaggeratedly, he found a grassy spot to camp.

(x)

As time passed, pokemon began to show up, coming for the laden berry tree. The tree was in the middle of a small field, and little cover was available, making those approaching clearly visible. Without much thought, Elliot ordered Sono or Discord to attack them.

Some of these pokemon simply turned and ran back into the forest when confronted by the diminutive bird or balloon-like fluffball. But the pokemon appearing were those who had already ignored the warning sight of a trainer and his freerunning pokemon. They were bold, or stupid, and a few of them, common ones, even came with the intention of a fight rather than a meal.

A short time past noon, a small pack of rattata showed up. A few would dart out first, attracting the attention and attacks of Sono and Discord, while the others made a run for the tree and snagged bright red berries from the lower branches. Meanwhile, first pokemon would run away to avoid attacks, Howler barking excitedly and running back and forth to chase them, sometimes diving into a bush in a futile effort to chase a fleeing rattata. The other two pokemon quickly realized what was going on and retired to nurse bruises from previous fights, but Howler kept it up until the pokemon had collected sufficient berries and vanished permanently. Then, his tail wagging proudly, he trotted back to Elliot and flopped down by his side, panting and seeming to grin. Elliot smiled and scratched the thick fur on Howler's neck absently, then looked up. Elliot noticed movement coming up the path, immediately recognizable, although he couldn't say why, as different from a pokemon.

The boy who stepped into the clearing was around Elliot's age, perhaps a year older or younger. It was hard to tell. He was scrawny and gangly, and the abnormally large net he carried with his backpack served only to confuse Elliot's perception of scale.

He was the sort of trainer interested, even obsessed, with the weaker bug pokemon, the kind of pokemon who one could reasonably expect to be caught in a net without destroying it, the surrounding area and the catcher. Bug catchers were the youngest class of pokemon studiers, as for younger children, the only wild pokemon that could be closely studied were the common bugs. They were not imposing figures nor serious trainers in the normal sense, but were often good enough, putting forth the same diligent effort into training as they did studying their weedle.

"Hi," Elliot said.

"Hi," answered the other boy. Then, stating the obvious, "You're a trainer, right? Let's have a battle."

"Sure," Elliot said, not thinking of Caw in his pokeball after being injured previously, of Prowler and Din having wandered off, of Sono and Discord's bruises, of Howler panting by his feet. "How many?"

"Three each okay?" At Elliot's nod, the boy three out an oddly colored pokeball that released a large, perfectly proportioned caterpie.

Howler hadn't fought any real battles that day. It had been Sono and Discord who Elliot ordered against the various pokemon. And the growlithe would have a type advantage. Thinking this far and no further, Elliot ordered him out.

Caterpie were understood to be pushover pokemon. Any one who was of reasonable strength would have well exceeded the level needed to evolve – it followed that a caterpie, by nature of being one, was not of reasonable strength.

Of course, trained pokemon could be surprising.

"Tackle!" Elliot yelled again. The caterpie spat out another sticky white thread onto a branch of the berry tree at an angle and yanked itself out of the way, then broke the thread, the momentum of the swing making it land behind Howler. It sent a second string at the growlithe, who already had a few stuck to his fur. The strings hadn't caused much impediment yet, but it was only a matter of time. On the third attack Elliot finally ordered an ember. The caterpie again tried to escape, but one of the ember attacks burnt through the string, causing the caterpie to fall back to the ground, small balls of flame striking it as it huddled against the turf. Howler's attack was poorly aimed and other small fireballs dropped into the empty grass, causing it to steam.

The other trainer switched tactics and the caterpie charged, slamming headfirst into Howler hard enough to knock him off his feet. He snapped at it in response and got a mouthful of stringshot.

Howler whined, sitting down and pawing, confused, at his mouth as his jaws strained to open. The caterpie tackled him again in the chest and he breathed out sharply, his breath containing a puff of clear flame. The stringshot burnt away in an instant.

"Flame it again," Elliot ordered, somewhat vaguely, and Howler produced a sort of unsustained flamethrower attack as he often did at this order. This attack was enough. The other boy recalled the caterpie and sent out a spinarak.

Without hesitation the new pokemon sent shot out webbing at Howler. Mounds built up around his legs and chest. The growlithe whined again, struggling. The spider circled a moment, perhaps not sure of what attack to use. As it came around to be in front of Howler, the growlithe paused in his attempts to escape to spit a flamethrower at it, hitting the bug type dead on and making it screech in pain, the sound horrible enough to make Howler's attack falter.

The other boy told it to stay back and wait, and, moving erratically as if in pain, it did so. Howler's attempts, meanwhile, grew more and more frantic. His breath shimmered with heat as his breathing speeded up and, inadvertently, caused the stringshot around his chest and forelegs to begin to shrivel. He began biting at them and they broke as his teeth touched them on either side of his muzzle, the heat making them shrink and snap. Within moments he was free again.

The spinarak hissed unhappily, an eerie, high-pitched sound, and shot a gob of something black and foul at Howler, who yelped in disgust as it hit him head-on, shaking himself and sending droplets flying everywhere. Whining and pawing again at his head, he was too absorbed in his own misery to pay attention as the other pokemon scurried up to bite him on one leg.

Howler jumped with his two front legs already in the air and wound up tangled and confused on the ground. Elliot recalled him with a sigh, feeling there was something wrong with Howler having so much trouble against a bug. He turned to Sono.

Again, the spinarak didn't hesitate or wait for orders before flinging webbing at her. Sono made an eeping sound and began frantically dodging, ignoring Elliot's order of wing attack. One strand brushed against her wing and she went down, overburdened and off balance. She struggled on the ground for a moment, her small wings beating furiously enough to dislodge feathers, and without thinking pecked at the strand. Within a minute she had wrapped herself in a tangled ball of stringshot and Elliot gave up and returned her as well.

Caw would be an obvious choice for the last pokemon, but he'd been savaged earlier after saying something about Din to Prowler. Elliot sent out Discord instead.

Discord, like the others, wound up buried in webbing.

"Uproar!" Elliot shouted. Discord inflated, the sticky strands stretching as he expanded. Elliot covered his ears as the attack began.

The spider trembled and ran sideways by reflex, stepping onto one of the blackened, smoldering patches from Howler's earlier ember attack. The legs that touched the area recoiled, curling under and it tripped, its momentum carrying it forward just enough. It flipped over and fell into the center of the spot and stayed there, its legs convulsively bending and unbending in the air. As Discord quieted, the sound of its chittering shrieks became audible. The other boy recalled it, looking down at the pokeball with a slightly worried expression for a moment.

The third pokemon the boy sent out was a surprise, given his earlier two, and to be expected, given everything else.

"Own own own!" it shouted, waving its bone for emphasis – of what, Elliot couldn't guess. It looked very much like all the other cubone Elliot had seen. A more astute observer than Elliot might have noticed it was in marginally better condition than the others, its frame more filled out in flesh and muscle, although it was far from the superb condition of the other two pokemon.

"Bone club," the other boy ordered firmly, seeming to take time to pronounce the words especially clearly. The cubone hefted its bone and charged at Discord, who inhaled and blasted out a second uproar, making the cubone falter. It struck him, but the blow was weak. Discord punched it in retaliation. His arms were mostly free and the webbing, although limiting how far out he could push, actually strengthened his attack by bracing him so that he wasn't pushed back himself. The cubone was knocked onto its back. It quickly stood again and walloped him hard, noticeably depressing the top of Discord's head for a moment.

How could Discord free himself? Elliot wondered. "Discord, rollout!"

Discord began to spin, winding the cords tighter and tighter until it seemed they'd break. But they didn't. Instead, Discord's spin suddenly reversed itself as the strands snapped back like rubber bands. Discord lay in the center limply, exhausted and dizzy. The cubone starting whacking him repeatedly over the head like a toddler trying to hammer in a peg.

Discord recovered somewhat and bellowed again. Startled, the cubone nearly dropped its club and then fumbled frantically a moment to catch it again. It hugged the bone to its chest anxiously.

"Discord, um, try to nail it with a punch!"

Discord reached out with his stubby arms. The cubone was just out of reach. He flailed comically for a moment, utterly ignored by the cubone, who was still hugging its bone like a child with a stuffed teddiursa. Annoyed, Discord inflated again.

"Shut it up!" yelled the other boy in frustration as the uproar attack began again. The cubone, startled, did the first thing that occurred to it – it whacked Discord in the face.

Discord wound up getting the club shoved down his throat. He choked and punched the cubone away, breaking its grip. It let out a horrified wail and scrambled at Discord as he, seeing an opportunity, puffed up again and swallowed the bone.

To Elliot and Discord's surprise, the cubone screamed hysterically, pounding at the jigglypuff with its tiny fists.

"Let's end the match," said the boy quickly to Elliot, who nodded.

"Discord, stop it," Elliot said, walking over. Discord relinquished the bone and the cubone snatched it and scrambled away, whimpering .

"Sorry about that," the boy said. "I got him recently as a present, and he's still a little high-strung."

(x)

The murkrow pulled roughly along a branch, stripping the leaves with the berries. Prowler cringed at the sound.

((Not going to eat any?)) he asked, stripping another section. She had been gone for several hours and reappeared inexplicably. He was glad she had shown up at all before the night – she was Elliot's pokemon, and he did not like that she left.

((We have eaten.)) Her eyes flicked up for a moment. ((Are you determined to cause as much damage as possible?))

Caw paused for a moment. Then he said, ((This? It'll grow right back. Berry trees are stripped all the time.))

Prowler did not argue. She knew the trees as near bushes, small, sickly things that grew rarely and died often. And in concept, she understood – what gave in abundance had least for itself. But she did not argue. The tree struck her as unnatural and she preferred not to think much of it.

Discord was being similarly destructive at a lower branch, although he was slower. He was crushing the berries for the juice rather than swallowing them whole, his throat sore.

Prowler sniffed the air and slid off again. Din noticed she was gone a moment after and looked around anxiously, but she did not know where Prowler had gone and could not follow.

(x)

The next morning Prowler returned with a struggling snubbull in her jaws.

"Why do you have that?" Elliot asked, feeling strangely uneasy for a moment.

((You wanted one, didn't you?)) she said.

"Oh. So that's for me?"

((Of course.)) She dropped it to the ground, pinning it under one paw almost as an afterthought. The snubbull's pink legs flailed about wildly.

"Um, okay," Elliot said, pulling a pokeball from his bag. "Thanks."

* * *

Next chapter: Elliot meets a new friend, gets to Goldenrod, and decides to enjoy the sights and watch a tournament. What, you don't believe me?


	11. In the Midst of Life

Another late chapter. Sorry sorry, I really should try harder. Hopefully, the next chapter will be on time (I promise that a lot, don't I…)

Ace65 – Hello! As luck would have it much of this chapter already involves cubone and some of the things you mentioned, so while you won't get answers, exactly, you'll get information of a sort. And as you'll see, this chapter is just as it was promised last chapter. After all, it's not like I'm ever less than truthful.

Typhoon – Hello as well! So Prowler's your favorite? That's good to know. Be careful you don't underestimate Caw because of that, though – pretty much all pokemon come from the wild one way or another, and you may find he's more experienced than he seems…

No, Discord isn't a whismur, but good eye! He has been demonstrating the soundproof characteristic. But he's not a whismur or a half-and-half cross for that matter, I'm afraid. Discord's differences from 'standard' jigglypuff are around the same degree as that of some of the pokemon Ash ran into in the Orange Islands.

What's wrong with Din…well, bear in mind that Din is a different species than either Prowler or Caw, and that's a large part of it. Caw found the poochyena distastefully alien from the beginning, so his complaints might just be from that. And as for Prowler, well, there's a ten level difference between when meowth and poochyena evolve, so she's likely overestimating how strong Din should be. (The fact Din started off very young in comparison to the rest of Elliot's pokemon only causes further problems.)

As to Prowler and the meowth, she hasn't made any attempt to actually kill meowth. She tried to bury one pokeball containing a meowth, and the other one she ate had already died.

As to the rest of it – there will be an answer, but it won't be soon. Sorry!

* * *

_When a jigglypuff sings, it never pauses to breathe. _

_- Sapphire pokedex_

Chapter Eleven: In the Midst of Life

(x)

Elliot entered the town and saw something he'd never seen before. Rubble. Several buildings had been completely leveled, and those around them were missing walls. Small craters were torn in the asphalt of the street, and entire slabs of cement paving from the sidewalks were missing.

The scene was so strange that it took him a minute to realize it must have been caused by some sort of accident. Skirting well around the damaged area, he headed towards the place his pokegear said the Center was.

Inside there, he felt something was wrong. The place wasn't empty, but Elliot thought it looked like there were only about half the normal number of trainers, all clustered tightly together. Some were talking and joking normally, but most were quiet.

"Hi," Elliot said to one of those quiet ones, a boy perhaps fifteen. "Um, do you know what happened…?"

"Oh hi," the boy said, looking up. "It was an accident. You just get here?"

Elliot nodded.

The boy glanced around, a strangely familiar motion. "You know," he added casually, "it'd probably be best if you don't stay here too long, because of the, accident."

"It could happen again?" Elliot asked nervously.

"Not exactly. But because it happened."

(x)

The boy said his name was Gabe. Like Elliot, he was heading towards Goldenrod, and they decided to go together. Afterwards, Elliot would think back to Gabe's phrasing, which had seemed perfectly reasonable at the time but in reflection seemed too perfect, as if Gabe had been more intent on traveling together than he'd let on.

Despite that, Gabe was the most approachable person Elliot had met in a long time, and without exactly meaning to, he told most of his story, the things he had experienced and couldn't dismiss. He told about cryptic warnings, about overheard conversations, about his pokemon, about rockets and jennies. What Gabe made of it, Elliot wasn't sure, but he listened seriously, not dismissing the things Elliot said. And even if Gabe didn't believe a word, it felt like a relief just to say all of it out loud.

(x)

"Wow…" Elliot said softly as they came out of the forest and the skyline became visible.

"Yeah. They don't have anything like this in Kanto, do they?" Gabe said, his voice quiet as well. "Or in Hoenn."

For a moment, they both stared at the distant buildings reaching into the sky. Then Gabe broke the spell, turning to him with a smile. "Come on. If we hurry, we can get there before dark."

Gabe wasn't quite right. They reached the city right at dark, the exactly halfway point of twilight, but Goldenrod only shined the brighter for it. Elliot might have spent hours wandering in circles, as disoriented by the neon lights as if he were a venomoth, but Gabe navigated the streets easily, bringing them to the Pokecenter.

Inside it was suddenly normal again, like always, and Elliot felt a burst of relief at the familiarity of it all. They ate a quick snack, turned in their pokemon, and went to bed.

(x)

"So where are you going? The gym?"

Elliot nodded, swallowing thickly. The food in the Goldenrod was impossibly, gloriously normal. The breakfast was pancakes, and they actually tasted like pancakes. Elliot had soaked them in syrup until they doubled in size and was now engaged in eating them with the minimum amount of time wasted on chewing. Gabe seemed amused by his energy. "Yeah," Elliot managed after a second. Gabe might have said something more, but at that moment Elliot's name was called by the Joy and he headed up to get his pokemon. When he sat back down he asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Oh? I'm going to buy some things I need."

"Like at the mega department store?"

"Something like that, yeah," Gabe said absently, taking another moderate bite from his own, strangely unsugared pancakes. "Let's meet up back here at the Center, okay?"

(x)

Elliot made his way to the gym.

It took a while. Goldenrod was bigger and brighten than he could have ever imagined was possible, and the streets were crowded to the point of gridlock. Buildings shot up into the sky; staring up, Elliot became dizzy. And everywhere was a constant din of noise, talking and stepping and laughing and moving all rolled together into one indistinguishable rumble.

When he finally found the gym, it was like a sudden lull in a storm. The front courtyard was not empty (Elliot wondered if anywhere in Goldenrod was empty, ever) but it was not so densely packed, and there were no street vendors' shops and cries on it. Elliot paused a moment, taking it in, then headed forward.

The front of the gym reminded him of those in Kanto, big yet streamlined and accessible rather than ancient and intimidating. It looked modern, in Elliot's eyes, normal contrasted against the Ecruteak one. Elliot entered.

The floor was made of bright, sunny tile, the walls a clear gold. A long row of windowboxes overflowing with flowers ran all the way along each of the four walls. It was cheerful, glowing, happy. This, Elliot thought, was exactly what a gym should be.

In the center was the normal brown-floored, white-lined battle area, with a teen a few years older than him. She jumped up.

"Hey!" she called as he approached, voice bubbly. Her hair was a bright bubblegum pink. "Here for a battle?"

"Yeah," Elliot said, feeling oddly awkward about carrying on a conversation at a distance. He sped up slightly to close the gap, coming shortly to the edge of the stadium area.

"My name's Whitney and I specialize in normals," the girl said. "If you don't have any objection, the battle will be two on two."

"Okay," Elliot agreed.

She grinned. "All right! Go!" She threw a pokeball, which spun in the air a moment before breaking open and releasing a clefairy.

Elliot faltered a half second, then threw out Sono's pokeball. "Sono, peck!"

"Mega punch, Clefairy!"

Sono flew forward and pecked the clefairy on the nose. It didn't flinch, just pulled back one arm and punched. Elliot jumped at the sound – a vicious smack sound, like it had been caused by a baseball bat rather than a pokemon. Sono hit the wall and slid down in a heap.

Eliot reached for her pokeball, but she was moving, hopping back to her feet. She puffed out her feathers and made a hissing sound through her open beak.

"Okay, Sono, gust!"

Sono began beating her wings, sending shockwaves of air forward to smack again and again into the clefairy, which braced itself and raised its arms to cover its face. She tried to focus, aim the wind together like Caw. Her wings were not especially suited to the attack, too stubby for proper manipulation, but what she was attempting was basic. She managed to push the air from her two wings together in front of her, so that it swirled, and then she fed more air into it to make it grow. A cyclone formed. It was large and unstable, threatening to break apart at any moment, but it held when she sent it forward and held when it picked up the clefairy and flung it, wailing, around and around before releasing it to smack into a different wall than the one she had hit.

The clefairy was too light for it to be thrown with real force, but it was hurt and dizzy. Sono darted over, landing on it and digging her talons in for purchase. She began to peck and beat it with her wings.

The clefairy recovered after a few seconds of this and sent a poorly aimed punch at Sono. It didn't do much damage but did serve to knock her away long enough for the clefairy to roll to its feet.

"Okay then, metronome Clefairy!"

The clefairy began to wave its fingers back and forth, chanting to itself. Sono cocked her head to one side curiously. The clefairy stopped, glowing, and then abruptly opened its mouth and sent a searing blast of flame at Sono.

When it faded, Elliot recalled her.

Metronome…what should he use against a pokemon that could use any move?

He really hadn't been expecting to see the move in an actual battle. He thought it usually caused moves like splash and water gun, not fire blast. Who should he use? Caw? If it used thunderbolt or ice beam – but that went for all of them, right? "Go!" he yelled, throwing the Greatball.

"Again!"

Caw started flying upward before the clefairy was halfway through the arm-waving, and the resulting move – it might have been hydro pump – arced under him to splatter into the windowboxes, smashing them. Whitney winced. "Clefairy, aim higher, okay?"

Caw hadn't been given any order yet. He didn't want to risk a glance looking back to Elliot, so he flew in a careful circle to line up his sight. If Elliot didn't give an order…but the boy seemed to be thinking, not in the trance trainers occasionally slipped into. Caw dove suddenly to avoid a thunderwave, wrenching his wings as he pulled up again.

"Caw, um, wing attack!" ordered Elliot, who had realized he needed to say something even if he hadn't worked out a strategy yet.

The move this time was a ripple in the air. Caw flew through it unaffected to smash into the clefairy, then rapidly climbed to dodge the mach punch that came an instant after.

"Clefairy, sing!"

The clefairy took a deep breath but failed to inflate, something Elliot found odd. Then it began to sing.

Elliot only heard the first seconds before it was drowned out by raucous cawing. After another few moments, the clefairy gave up and Caw silenced.

"Blizzard!" Whitney yelled into the returning quiet.

The upper portion of the attack reached Caw, scarcely more than a gust of cold. Caw circled well above, waiting. He wouldn't have tried this sort of tactic in Kanto, but here, it wouldn't be considered anything noteworthy.

"Metronome again!" Whitney was clearly hoping to get lucky with an attack that would hit him at the distance. Her strategy wasn't a bad one – she'd wind up getting him eventually if he kept circling long enough. Below him, Caw saw the clefairy use reflect, then execute a low kick on the air, followed by a flurry of leaves. Caw took his eyes off the clefairy for a moment, looking at the two trainers as below him came the sound of the clefairy's jaws snapping together in a bite attack, followed by a deep rumble from an earthquake attack. A sudden thunder struck him, and he spasmed in the air a moment before recovering.

He stared down again as the clefairy waved its hands once more, then let out a distinctly horrified cry an instant before exploding. Caw, looking somewhat smug, landed as the smoke cleared.

Whitney laughed, sounding somewhat embarrassed. "That happens sometimes," she said, recalling the clefairy. "I guess your murkrow wins." She picked a second pokeball and tossed it. "Go, Miltank!"

The miltank looked slightly smaller than the one Elliot had caught, although it might have been because pokemon sometimes seemed diminished seen in the perspective of an arena, or just because he was remembering wrong.

"Wing attack!"

Caw started forward as Whitney yelled, "Defense curl!"

The miltank curled up, Caw's wings glancing over her back ineffectively.

"Okay, attract!"

She uncurled, shaking her fur with a soft lowing sound and creating an odd sort of clear pinkish shine around her in the air, almost like a ripple of heat over hot pavement. Caw didn't react, so Elliot wasn't sure if it had worked.

"Rollout!"

The miltank barreled towards Caw. At the last second he hopped and flapped his wings to get just high enough that she rolled under him, then surreptitiously he sent a weak gust at her from behind as he flew upward, just enough so that as she approached the edge of the rough arena floor she lost traction for an instant, skidded onto the tile and then slid into the wall and unrolled a few yards from where the flowers had been scattered under the clefairy's hydropump. She lay dazed a moment in the spilled dirt and crushed flowers, then stood again, shaking her head with a bellow.

"Try again Miltank!" Whitney called encouragingly. "Focus on building up power!"

The miltank mooed agreeably – Elliot thought the sound was remarkably unthreatening – and curled up again, beginning to spin. She tolled in circles around the arena, in the opposite direction of Caw's own slow circles above.

"Okay, now jump!"

She launched into the air to strike Caw, the angle of the spin pushing him downward. He let out a pained cry but retained enough presence of mind to spread his wings, wrenching them but managing to pull out of his fall shortly before he would have hit the ground, skimming inches above. A few stray feathers fluttered down as he unsteadily flew upward again. The miltank landed without breaking her spin and resumed circling and building up power.

"Um, icy wind!"

Caw sent the attack down to strike the miltank head-on. She slowed visibly for a moment, but then picked back up.

"That was a good idea," called Whitney, "but Miltank's generating too much heat for it to do anything but cool her off a little." She grinned. "Attack again!"

The miltank hit. This time Caw didn't manage to slow his fall fast enough and he hit the ground, crumbling into it for a moment in a jumbled of black feathers. He beat his wings immediately and pushed himself up again, shedding more feathers.

"Okay, finish it Miltank!"

This time, at the last moment, Caw beat his wings sharply and dodged, the attack missing by an inch of so. He clapped his wings together and the wind smashed the miltank into the wall, where it uncurled and fell ten feet to the ground, narrowly missing more flowers.

Whitney looked upset for a moment, then shook her head and recalled her pokemon.

"Great battle," she told him, walking up with the Plainbadge in hand. "I have to admit, I never thought a murkrow would be much of a challenge." She smiled, holding out the badge.

Elliot grinned as he headed back out into the courtyard. After losing at Olivine and not being able to even fight in Ecruteak, getting his new badge seemed even better than usual. "You did great, Caw," he told the murkrow on his shoulder. "I was worried when I saw her order attract, but I guess it didn't work."

Yes, Caw agreed, his voice oddly flat. It didn't work.

Elliot's good mood didn't fade as he wandered around, utterly lost. The people around him were as jumbled and different as they had been at Olivine, each so impossibly unique they all blurred together. The only detail that stayed with him was a glimpse of a cubone in a girl's arms, a pink ribbon tied around its neck in a large bow, the item's juxtaposition with the white skull above lending the scene an unreal feeling.

(x)

By the time he did find the Center, they were serving lunch. Elliot didn't see Gabe. He headed up to get a plate and hand over his mp for healing.

As he sat down at a table he noticed that there were a lot of cubone out. It wasn't that everyone had them, more like every one in ten, but that was still a lot.

"Hey," said a girl near him. "You have a cubone?"

Elliot shook his head. "No."

"You're from Kanto, aren't you? Well, you should hurry and buy one. They sell out really fast, you know."

"No," Elliot said again. "Why are they so popular, anyway?" he asked.

"They just are," she said, as if this should be obvious. "Why do you think there'd be a reason, anyway? You guys are the ones nuts about psyduck. Well, you'd better get one the right way, understand? People don't like it when stupid trainers come through and catch all the wild pokemon because they're stupid and greedy."

Elliot wasn't sure why she was telling him this. "The right way?"

"I mean, here, we don't want the same thing to happen as with your psyduck, you understand? "

Elliot didn't. He nodded anyway. "But, back there – I mean, like you said, like the psyduck, I know back there people couldn't find any because they were popular. And here, it's like everyone has cubone. But isn't that the –"

"Of course not!" she snapped, as if angry. Behind her, Elliot could see people edging away. He wished he could do the same. "We don't just catch them until they're all gone. We don't make a profession out of poaching. All these cubone, they're bred. By _responsible_ people. There are still plenty of wild cubone. There always have been." Her eyes narrowed suddenly. "Which DOESN'T mean we need you to go up and change that –"

"Go away," Gabe said blandly. She jumped.

"Hey," she said, "who are you to-"

"Go away," he repeated. "You're making a fool of yourself." He looked to Elliot, acting as if she no longer existed. "Hey. There's a baby tournament starting soon, you want to come watch?"

"Baby tournament?" Elliot repeated, following Gabe back outside. It didn't sound that impressive. "What's that?"

"It's somewhat of a niche thing. Breeders use just-hatched pokemon, but they're bred from special stock and taught attacks, so the battles aren't like normal low-level battles. Doing well raises the amount a breeder can charge for pokemon, so they really go all out. Anyway, how'd your battle go?"

"I won."

"Great. Whitney can be tricky. Did she get any of your pokemon with attract?"

Elliot paused. "She used it on Caw, but I guess it missed."

"That's lucky. I remember she got my machoke with it, and the battle was a nightmare. Even when we did win, he was out of sorts for weeks afterward." He shook his head slightly. "Whitney's generally seen as a medium-strength gym leader, but for pokemon, sometimes I think this is probably the worst of all of them." He was silent a moment, then he shrugged. "So anyway, if we want to see the tournament, we'd better get moving."

(x)

The stadium holding the tournament was standard – after a moment, Elliot realized the obvious, that this was because it held plenty of regular tournaments as well. Aside from the lack of a registration desk, the pre-tournament part seemed pretty normal as well. Gabe went off to buy a hotdog and Elliot decided to check out the huge display listing the battlers and their pokemon.

"A lot of cubone, don't you think?" said a girl to him.

After the ranting earlier, Elliot tried to answer noncommittally. There _were_ a lot of cubone on the board. "Yeah. I guess it's because they're so popular?"

"I guess. They're not thinking, though. I mean, cubone are selling regardless of who's breeding them. And besides, it's not like it'll really show anything." She shrugged. "They're all first-generation, so there's a ton of variety. It takes ages to get wild-caught lines to breed true. The whole point of this is supposed to be to show breed lines and stuff. And with cubone, breeding true would be a nightmare even if they were an established line. Only half of the bloodline can be kept and all."

"All wild caught?" Elliot repeated. "Back, um, earlier, someone was telling me that there were a lot of wild cubone, not like the psyduck in Kanto, because they were being bred. But, if they're being caught for that, how does it work? Aren't they pretty rare to start with?"

She shook her head, rippling her light brown hair. "No. They're rare because of accessibility – 'rare, area-specific' I think is the pokedex term. Their habitat is hard for people to get to. They're common in mountains, and trainers, you guys are common in forests and grass. They're basically the inverse of murkrow," she said. "If we lived on mountaintops, we'd think of them as pests."

* * *

As a random note, Gabe hasn't been to Hoenn, and was just going on hearsay when he mentioned it earlier.

Next chapter: Elliot sees the tournament, including a cute battle with an igglybuff! Fluffy happy bunnies run around and all is well. You believe me, don't you?


	12. We are in Death

Short chapter this time.

Irene – I'm afraid I'm not following strict game canon, so I have pokemon using a wider range of attacks than their level would allow, although they aren't that competent with higher level moves. Egg moves never made much sense to me, since you'd think plenty of wild pokemon should have them, so they're only being incorporated in a very limited form here.

Ace65 – Whitney's a pretty tough opponent when you fight her in the game and see her in the anime, and she does possess a pretty good strategy, so I didn't think it'd be fair to have her be a pushover, although that was my first thought too. Also, since rollout is a rock move and Elliot used Caw…poor Caw. And no, he's a he. I'm not sure what you mean about cubone clones. Trainer accessorizing doesn't reflect on the pokemon itself.

* * *

Chapter Twelve: …We are in Death

(x)

A group of girls were sitting a little ways away. One had a pokemon in her arms. The cubone was tiny, even for the ones Elliot had been seeing. The skull looked huge on it, hanging loosely over its head and the chin dipping to its chest, like a kid wearing a parent's oversized shirt. Its body shook suddenly, like it was coughing.

"You sure you should've bought that one?" a girl asked.

"The breeder said she was just born early," the owner said defensively. "She'll get bigger, she just needs time to get bigger."

"I know you wanted a girl but…" the first girl turned to another for support.

"You know what they say. You shouldn't pick runts just because you feel bad for them and all," offered the other girl. "If there really isn't anything wrong, it'd get bigger there and –"

"You know they don't treat the girls well! She's tiny and she's not going to be a good breeder and _you know what would have happened_, so shut up already." The fury in the girl's voice unsettled Elliot, and he turned away.

On the field, another cubone fainted, and the referee declared the other breeder's charmander the winner. The two headed off the field. Their replacements came out moments later, one a girl around twelve, the other a boy who looked like he couldn't be older than seven. Most of the trainers had been young like that – breeder's kids, Gabe had said. This tournament's battles were to be won or lost based on bloodline and learned attacks, not the trainer's skill. One released an igglybuff, the other a drowzee.

"Psychic, Somnak!" the drowzee's trainer called quickly, the words sliding together. The drowzee yawned once but did nothing, which was disappointing but not the humiliation it would be at a real fight. So far, Elliot had seen several pokemon fail to attack, some like the drowzee and others seeming to execute an attack but producing nothing.

"He's certainly nervous," said Gabe quietly. "Must be new. He's speaking too fast."

"Hm?"

"It helps to give clear orders with younger pokemon, so they don't get confused. Although in this case the drowzee's probably just not paying attention."

"Iggles, use sing!" The igglypuff puffed up, and Elliot smiled slightly at the spectacle . It was odd how Discord could manage it and just look bigger, while the igglybuff looked like it was expending real energy trying to keep the air in, like Merci holding her breath, checked puffed out dramatically and unnecessarily. The girl standing behind grinned victoriously, her short brown hair framing her face in a pixie cut, as the song began. The pitch was perfect, allowing Elliot to watch unaffected, without relaxing a muscle. None of the spectators yawned. But neither did the drowzee. The song continued, the igglybuff's voice starting to strain, the song slipping.

Gabe jumped to his feet. "Recall it!" he screamed.

The girl heard him, looked to the stands, her eyes wide and confused. She started, just started, to turn back to the battle. She might have been about to realize.

The igglybuff's voice altered. Its voice slipped from the trained pitch. A moment later, the two trainers fell to the ground, the crowd overcome an instant later, slumping down in their seats and falling asleep.

When they woke up, the igglybuff was being removed. Elliot saw the trainer being led in the other direction by officials, her expression of uncomprehending horror, and then all of them were herded out as well, quickly, as if it were hoped that if the spectators were removed fast enough, they might not realize what had happened.

But it had been a scream that woke them. It was likely the officials were wishing the girl had chosen to express her shock more quietly.

(x)

"Gabe – Gabe –" Elliot was saying, his voice anxious, like a child's. He couldn't complete the question, although there was no need to anyway. He just wanted Gabe to explain it, explain that it wasn't the question he couldn't ask.

Gabe wasn't looking at him, like before, like all of them. He turned to face Elliot for a moment as Elliot spoke, but his eyes slid around, looking around Elliot, and then after a moment he turned back to look forward again. He didn't answer. Then after a few moments, "I – There's something I need to do," he said, sounding evasive, almost guilty. "Just go back to the Pokecenter. It's – it's okay. I'll catch up with you there. Okay?" He said it like it were almost a plea. Elliot nodded.

But then he didn't. He didn't head back to the Center. He walked around, aimlessly, looking around him until everything blurred together and he was left as alone with his thoughts as if he were sitting quietly in the common room.

He did the only thing reasonable. He sat on a rock wall bordering a small square of grass and opened a pokeball.

Caw took in the surroundings with two quick turns of his head, then faced Elliot silently and attentively, waiting for him to speak.

"Hi," Elliot said. Then, "Caw, pokemon don't, they don't just die, do they? I mean, for no – for no – no reason, right?"

No, Caw answered, thinking of hunger, of the hulking pokemon he was grateful not to be, of trainers. No. Never.

"Right," Elliot said softly.

(x)

Before there had been a scream. This time Elliot heard screams, and somehow the shared nature of the response made it less horrifying, so that this time they did not ring inside his head afterward, in silence. Perhaps because there was not silence. He could hear others, talking, asking, the crowd, swarming around an alleyway, around something. He pushed his way through in time to see two people lifted something out of a dumpster.

A body. The hands were tied behind the back. A white plastic bag was over the head, tied around the neck. One trainer cut an opening and ripped it in half, exposing a girl's face with short brown hair in a pixie cut. He began to push against her chest.

"It's no good," said the one next to him. "She's cold."

A Jenny appeared shortly with an ambulance, the sight of her disturbing Elliot in a different way, and he backed away, out of the crowd, finally able to stop watching what he hadn't wanted to see in the beginning.

Absurdly, he thought, I wonder why there was only one scream. And then he dropped down, huddling on the pavement with his knees against his chest, breathing as fast as he could and feeling as though it wasn't enough, as if he could never get enough air.

(x)

For some reason he got up later and could walk around again, as if it – he got up again and walked. Almost painfully, he told himself that there was an ambulance, they'd help her. She'd looked – they'd help her. And he tried to think around it after he decided that. For some reason he was clutching one of his pokeballs tightly in his hand. He kept walking, and finally, he found a sign pointing to the Pokecenter, and followed it.

Gabe was standing by the wall of a building, a bag containing his purchases resting by his side. He saw Elliot, trotted over. Elliot wondered why he hadn't been in the Pokecenter.

"Hey." Gabe looked concerned, oddly guilty at seeing Elliot's face. "Did something happen?"

"A girl," Elliot said. Without thinking he suddenly looked over his shoulder back the way he'd came, his movement as jerky as if he'd been burned. "A dead girl." After he said it he knew he shouldn't have, because it was true now.

"I'm sorry," Gabe said, and Elliot did not pause to wonder why Gabe said that to him rather than the girl.

Gabe brought him back to the Center without speaking. Inside he said only, "They're serving supper. You should eat something."

(x)

Gabe stood up suddenly. He looked to the door. "I have to go," he said. He hesitated, as if he wasn't sure if he should speak. "You've been lucky so far. Listen. You should have taken your friends' advice, and take mine. Don't trust people. " Elliot looked at him, waiting. And then Gabe said, "Because it wasn't an accident, and there have always been demons."


	13. Turning Back

Sorry I haven't updated for so long, and happy New Years!

To anyone confused, no, the igglybuff didn't explode. It was breathing out, not in, so no bursting or exploding was possible.

Also, this chapter contains the word 'stymified'. I'm not entirely sure if that is a word, or if where I live we've just mixed together stymied and mystified, but it worked better than either. I don't know, maybe it's wrong. I might change it later.

* * *

Chapter Thirteen: Turning Back

(x)

Caw was still oddly remote a week afterward, sitting quietly, eating mechanically and speaking only when spoken to. He made no effort to avoid the company of others, but this served only to illustrate the point that indifference is sometimes the most upsetting.

Elliot didn't notice. He had no time to. His camping sites were carefully chosen and meticulously set up, he always gathered a surplus of firewood and he had actually begun measuring the food he gave the pokemon. He started to design the way he set up the campfire, stacking wood in particular patterns he'd been taught would help them burn better, and seemed not to realize that this was a pointless effort to make with a fire type on his team. When this was finished he would find something else, talking to his pokemon or flipping through his pokedex. Sometimes he'd spend time before going to sleep looking illegible pages from the burned journal, deep in thought.

The pokemon saw nothing wrong with Elliot. Caw was another matter - Sono, at least, felt uneasy. But they did not spend much time thinking of it.

There were other things for them to think about. Elliot was keeping them out far more than usual, with at least one out while he traveled. He'd shift them as they got tired and often, recovering during lunch, the one or two newly bruised would cheerily recount what they'd seen and done. The amount of battling slowed Elliot somewhat, but he didn't seem to mind, any more than he seemed to mind stopping a hour earlier to set up camp or starting later after carefully packing up in the morning.

For the most part, the five others of the group enjoyed themselves. Elliot was traveling though a forested area, one of the unnamed sections referred to on maps simply as an amorphous 'route', and there was much to see and do. Elliot was showing new determination to catch pokemon, which among other things had led to an interesting battle against a pineco - Din had been stymified by its frills. How was she supposed to bite it? - and a long fruitless chase of a lone hoothoot.

Slowly, Elliot's campsites became disordered and Caw began to take more notice of the group. By the time they reached Orangegrove, things were normal again, as if nothing had happened.

(x)

Entering the town, Elliot realized he'd almost been steeling himself, as if he were expecting something awful. His eyes were low and focused on the ground nearest to him, his shoulders hunched slightly. With effort, he straightened up and looked around himself. Only ordinary streets, ordinary sidewalks, ordinary walls and alleys and doors and windows.

Was he relieved? Somewhat. But there was an empty sort of anxiety now, as if he were waiting for it to occur inevitably. It was almost as though it would have been better otherwise.

He walked faster.

(x)

She thanked him for turning in his pokemon to be healed, and Elliot thought for a second how odd and stilted it sounded, inappropriate. What else would a Joy say, though? About time you healed them? I hope I don't see you for a while? And it didn't even matter what she said. It wasn't like he really heard it or thought about it, not normally.

Elliot shook his head slightly and sat down to wait.

The feeling he'd had in the streets had mostly left him now. Looking around, Elliot realized belatedly that the Pokecenter was unusual, smaller than normal and with the furniture arranged a bit differently. Maybe it was because of how small the town was, they didn't need a standard, full-size Center. It was odd, he thought, but it made him feel better somehow. It wasn't a part of something, like the rest of Johto that was still strange to him, but it wasn't like he was stepping over a border back into Kanto either. It was just a Center, somewhere in between, not a piece of anything else.

There were a couple other trainers there, watching a television. It was on the news. The man on the screen was reporting something in Goldenrod.

Elliot turned away. He stared out a small window located high on the wall, just below the ceiling of the Pokemon Center. Through it, he could see the top of a building, blue sky, part of a cloud.

He almost didn't hear when the Joy announced his pokemon were healed. Taking them, he headed to a room.

At first, he wasn't tired. He took out a map instead, figured out how far he'd come. He was heading to Azalea. There was another gym there, so -

Nothing bad would happen there, would it? It wasn't that big.

Nothing bad would happen here, would it? Nothing would happen to anyone, no broken buildings because of something that was an accident and wasn't an accident, nothing. Bad things didn't...Nothing bad would happen.

Elliot slept poorly.

(x)

The boy looked like he was about nine, although he might have been ten. He wasn't a trainer exactly – even Elliot could pick up on that. All the same, he'd waylaid Elliot midway through the courtyard and demanded a battle, wanting to try out a present he'd just gotten.

"Sure," Elliot said. The boy threw out a friendball, releasing a cubone that looked identical to the others Elliot had seen. Elliot picked Sono's pokeball and tossed that.

"Attack it! Tackle!" The cubone growled in a way that might have been meant as intimidating – it was possible, at least – lowered its head and charged blindly.

"Um, uh, dodge," Elliot said unnecessarily, as the cubone's tackle wouldn't connect unless Sono decided to move into the attack. "Quick attack."

Sono beat her wings sharply and rocketed forward to strike the cubone in its side. It was knocked off its feet and went rolling over the cement. It lay there for a moment, whimpering and moaning.

"Cubone!" the boy yelled, his voice frustrated and disappointed. "Come on!" It struggled back to its feet. Elliot cringed at the raw patches where it had been skinned. "Great! Now tackle!"

The cubone's gait was awkward and pained, and this time, Sono didn't need to attack. It sped up just in front of her and, when she pushed herself into the air to dodge, it stumbled and fell again, then lay there wailing.

"Get up!" the boy shouted. The cubone stayed down, keening.

"Stop it," Elliot said.

The boy looked at him, furious, and Elliot didn't know what to do. "Cubone can still fight!"

"Just stop it." Elliot pulled Sono's pokeball off his belt and moved to recall her.

"Then you forfeit."

Elliot shook his head. "Just stop it," Elliot said quietly.

"We haven't lost. Get up, Cubone!"

It did, slowly.

Elliot recalled Sono. "Stop it," he said again. He closed his eyes a moment, turned, and walked away.

(x)

Outside the town was more of the same forest, which was not exactly a bad thing but not exactly a good one either. "When does Ilex Forest begin, anyway?" he asked looking at the map. "I mean, how can I tell?"

((When the leaves cover the sky.))

Elliot looked at Caw, then up. "They do now, don't they?"

((No. When they cover it. When there is no light.)) Caw's voice was oddly distant and matter of fact, as if he were describing a signpost and there was nothing more to tell. When pressed, the only addition was, ((You'll know it when you see it.))

If Caw regretted saying that, there was no way to tell, but it led to him being asked incessantly over the next few days, "Is this it?" each time Elliot perceived an imaginary change in lighting or leaf quantity.

And then, suddenly, there was a difference, as pronounced as the difference between field and forest. In front of him Elliot saw mammoth trees that dwarfed the buildings of both Saffron and Goldenrod, reaching up so high he could not even see where they ended, and turning the sky from blue to a deep green. Across the path was the ancient trunk of one tree, fallen and hollowed. From a distance there was a small hole in it like one for ants, and approaching, Elliot saw it was an entrance that rose well over his head. Everything was unreal, like he'd been shrunk to enter a fairy kingdom.

Or not enter. The size of the entrance notwithstanding, it was blocked by a man wearing the clothing of an official, who told Elliot he couldn't continue.

Elliot didn't argue or demand an explanation. He turned and started back the way he'd come.

Everything was fine.


	14. Francis

I'm a horrible, lazy author...sorry, I promise to do my best to start updating regularly again.

* * *

Chapter Fourteen: Francis

(x)

Now what was he supposed to do?

The map wasn't helpful. Off the main path between cities, it was an uncharted blur. Here be the dragonite. He could go that way...but he didn't know.

Azalea had a gym. Past there was Violet. Far above, along a second path, was another strip of cities with two other gyms. There was a route back down toward Violet at the end. So he could go that way, back up, gets those badges first instead.

Go to Fuchsia and Cinnabar and fight there.

He didn't know why he thought of that, of Michael's advice. It wasn't - no one had told him that, not this time. This time, he was just going by chance, like he'd meant to do in Kanto. It didn't matter what order he went in. Not in Johto. He shook his head.

Azalea was blocked. So he would go back the way he'd come.

Back. He didn't really feel scared at the thought, just a sort of emptiness. What had happened was closed off, remote and disconnected. It had just happened and then it was past, like it hadn't been. It wasn't any more a part of Goldenrod than it was a part of him.

It didn't matter, not at all.

(x)

In the grassy open area just before the city, trainers had gathered for battles. One started on the path Elliot was on.

"Go, Cuddles!" the girl said. Elliot blanched at the name. It could have scarcely been less appropriate for a jolteon.

The pokemon, at least, was a small and somewhat timid seeming one. If not particularly cuddly, it was closely reminiscent to the sort of girl Elliot imagined would be the kind to name something Cuddles despite the ridiculousness of it.

Her opponent, also female, smirked. She had a hard, lean look to her, the sort of girl who – on television at least – would be part of a loose gang of boys that ran wild and committed casual acts of violence while chain-smoking. She plucked her own pokeball from her belt with a sort of annoyed movement and popped it open, forgoing the more dramatic toss the younger girl had chosen. A marrowak appeared.

The girl had six pokemon, and it was unlikely all her others had a disadvantage. Any remaining doubt as to the reason of her choice was removed when she yelled confidently, "Femur, show that wuss of a cubone what a real pokemon can do!"

Elliot didn't want to watch the battle. She was doing it just to humiliate the other girl. He headed away, into the city.

(x)

And so Elliot was back in Goldenrod.

He was not scared. He was not apprehensive or frightened or upset or anything else.

So it was for no reason that Caw was out, riding on his shoulder. He'd just felt like it, that was all.

A boy with a murkrow on his shoulder was the least of things going on there, and no one else in the crowd spared them a second glance.

This view was not universal, though. From nowhere, a small group of murkrow assembled, one perching on a horizontal flagpole, two others on the sill of a second-story window, and the last on the rim of a store canopy. They cawed, the words thick and hard to understand. Caw replied in kind, a harsh, perhaps dialect speech.

((That your trainer?))

((Is.))

((Out because?))

((He wants.))

((Attract us know?))

((Doesn't – not care.))

((Which city from?)

((Here. Aren't all?))

They cawed in a way that might have been laughter. There was also something of admiration Elliot couldn't understand. ((Not picked up alone though?))

((Was.))

((Lucky, lucky,)) they chorused appreciatively. ((You anything shiny-special? Were?))

((Didn't think.))

((First trainer?))

((Of many.))

((Trade?))

((Always.))

((Lucky lucky lucky,)) they cawed again. ((Shiny-special _now_, sure.)) They crowed appreciatively and flew off, disappearing as abruptly and unobtrusively as they'd appeared.

Elliot wasn't sure what to make of the conversation. Some murkrow thing, he supposed. He thought of things Prowler had said. "Caw, you're friends with other murkrow?" he asked hopefully.

((I didn't know them, if that's what you mean,)) Caw replied, aware it wasn't.

"But you're like…" Elliot was struggling to phrase it in a way that would avoid the real question. "You're friendly with them?"

It was a fortunate wording, but Caw would just have lied anyway, so it didn't matter. ((Of course.))

(x)

Elliot passed a hamburger stand and was reminded that Goldenrod _had_ hamburgers. It was a bit of an odd choice for a late breakfast, but he headed over anyway and ordered one. He sat down and began to eat.

"Hey," said a girl's voice. "Elliot?"

He turned. A girl – or was she? She looked so adult – was looking at him. Suddenly she recognized her. The girl Miguel had been talking to. His sister.

She bowed slightly. "Thank you for helping my brother. I apologize for the imposition, as well as for your taking his burden." She held out something, a piece of metal that dangled on a leather strip, catching the light. "Please take this in return."

Elliot reached out his hand, and the necklace pooled into his palm. "May your journey be safe," she said, and vanished back into the crowded streets before he could say anything.

He looked down at the gift instead. It was a flat, thin metal tag with faint, unrecognizable markings, polished and shining. His fingertips seemed to tingle when he brushed them over the metal, but the feeling vanished before he was sure.

Not knowing what else to do with it, he dropped it into a pouch in his bag.

(x)

Lacking anything else he needed to do, Elliot dropped into the Pokecenter to heal his pokemon. He already had the Plainbadge, and he didn't feel like wandering around after what had…he didn't feel like wandering around. After his pokeballs were returned, he let his pokemon out to wander around and played checkers with another trainer a few months younger than him.

Someone turned the television up. "…police continue to search for Camille Bellamy, daughter of Patrick Bellamy, one of Goldenrod's most prominent breeders. Police believe she may have been kidnapped for a ransom. Her last known whereabouts were the yearly Baby Tourney, where…"

Elliot looked away, ignoring it.

"Hey," said a boy, heading over to where Elliot was sitting. "What's your name? I feel like I've seen you before."

He looked up, facing the TV screen again. The other boy was standing half in front of it. "I'm Elliot."

"Hm." He thought. "No, I don't think so," the other boy said after a moment. "Maybe I saw you in passing."

"…asked that if anyone has any information, please go to the police…"

"I was here in Goldenrod a little while ago," Elliot said.

"Ah, that must be it," the boy said.

An image was on the screen, of a girl with light brown hair. The screen was too small and distant to see the face.

"What's your name?" Elliot asked.

"Me? My name is Francis."


	15. Fault

Wow, chapter fifteen and Elliot only has two badges.

I really like Francis. He's a nice guy.

* * *

Chapter Fifteen: Fault

(x)

"Wow, you're from Ecruteak?" Elliot understood, of course, that Johto trainers had to come from somewhere, just like in Kanto, and that any city with people would have trainers from it, but it still felt incredible. Ecruteak, even more than the other places he'd seen, was unreal, like some huge diorama or TV show set, not part of the real world.

"Come on, I can't be that unbelievable."

"It just seems surprising. Hey," Elliot said, remembering his earlier attempt to find out about the Ecruteak legend, "I heard the story about the two towers, but I didn't really understand it. Do you know it?"

Francis nodded. "Everyone in Ecruteak does."

"Well, I was wondering if maybe you could explain. The end of the story was 'and the forest grew out and engulfed the eastern tower.' And then what?"

He smiled. "I suppose it is a rather unsatisfactory ending, put like that. It sounds like whoever told you didn't know the story very well. The whole story was like that, just statements, right?" Elliot nodded. "Yes, that would be a bit unfinished. Well, at the time, the people took it as a sign from the gods. Perhaps it grew because people were unworthy, or to protect the second tower from what happened to the first."

"What did happen?"

"Ah, well, that's a part of the legend too."

"Really?" Elliot said excitedly. "So you know?"

Francis shook his head gently. "To understand it, you need to know that what's in the legend isn't the whole of it. It's not that it burned and we forgot why. You have to think of it like history. If there was a horrible accident in Saffron, say, and their buildings burned, people would remember it _for_ it not being understood. One day, the building burst into flames. Some think it was a sign of the gods' anger, that they did it. Others say it was humans, either their carelessness…or their betrayal. But you have to understand that it isn't that there are different versions of the story, just the one. All the rest is speculation, and no one has ever been able to figure out what the real reason was."

"But it wasn't just an accident?"

"I suppose it could be," Francis admitted. "But the tower was a holy place of the gods, and given all the other things that happened at the same time, it's very unlikely. It's generally assumed that it burned for a reason, but no one knows where the blame lies."

"I guess that makes sense…" Elliot said. "I'd still like more of a reason."

"Well, so would we," Francis said with a laugh. "It's really closer to a list of events that occurred that people didn't understand rather than a just-so story. We don't know how they're connected, but we know they are."

"What about the second tower, then?"

"Still there."

"I mean, didn't anybody ever go there? Or cut down the forest?"

"Ah. I take it you didn't see that area."

"Um, no. Is there something special about it?"

"According to legend, it grew up suddenly, with all the trees the same size and packed so tightly that only a child could squeeze between the trunks. I can't say how fast it really grew, but today, the trees are still identical, still pressing together as tightly as bars, as if it grew to keep someone or everyone out. And with the first tower ashes, with the three runners vanished and the twin birds gone, no one wanted to mess with a forest that had clearly been put there for a reason." Francis smiled. "Would you?"

"I guess not. How long have things been like that, then?"

Francis shrugged. "You'd think not that long, because the remains of the tower are still standing. But everything involved seems unchanging. If you asked someone's grandfather, he'd tell you that's what the tower looked like when he was your age. And the trees of the forest have the smooth bark of saplings and are no thicker now as they were from the beginning. It's like everything's preserved somehow."

"Weird…" Elliot shivered. There was something really creepy to it. "So what do you think it means?"

"Hard to say." Francis shrugged again. "The simplest answer is that Ecruteak angered the gods, because they left and the forest grew, and that isn't ambiguous like the tower. But the problem with that is however well it fits the legend, it isn't borne out by the current reality. Ecruteak isn't under a curse and the gods don't seem displeased with it or even places committing worse offenses now. So I don't know. It might have been a warning."

"What about a fight between gods?"

"I can't imagine that happening. In all the stories, the gods exist together, and the five lived peacefully in Ecruteak since the beginning of memory."

(x)

Francis, Elliot was realizing, was odd in his lack of standard oddness. He seemed open and cheerful, like many of the people Elliot had traveled with, and had yet to reach a topic where he became closed and uncheerful, like all the people Elliot had traveled with. He had not yet glanced around for watchers or become suddenly interested in his sandwich or storefronts or what clouds looked like when asked a question, leaving Elliot to spend several days waiting for the other shoe to drop.

And it didn't. Francis answered Elliot's questions except for those he said he didn't know, made no vague warnings, and never once developed the distant, preoccupied look Elliot found foreboding. He was impossibly relaxed, as if for once Elliot was traveling with someone who knew no secrets.

(x)

Francis flipped through stations on the restaurant television while Elliot used a fork to carefully separate the unfamiliar shredded gooey whitish thing delivered as a side dish from his omelet.

Several booths away, a girl spoke.

"He's missing, Christopher."

"Practically all trainers are 'missing'," her companion replied dryly.

"Goddamnit, you know it's true. No one's been able to reach him for a month. Do you think he just forgot for a whole month to turn his phone on?"

He ran his fingers through his brown hair in a helpless motion. "Yes, Brigit, I do. Or he forgot to change the batteries. Or he broke it and didn't head back."

"And maybe he didn't head back because something happened."

"Am I supposed to care?"

"Yes, dammit!"

A few of the shredded bits had stuck to the fork tines with the goop, Elliot noticed with distaste, scrapping it off on the side of his dish. He wasn't going to try something new if he couldn't even figure out what it was supposed to be. "What are you looking for?" he asked Francis.

"I don't know," Francis said. "I'm sure I'll know it if I see it." A brightly colored cartoon flashed on for a few seconds, followed by the head and torso of a news anchor speaking in a serious tone, to be replaced with a cinematic explosion. He skewered a square of something lightly browned in his soup and blew on it before popping it in his mouth.

"I don't understand how you can be so casual," Brigit said. "What if something's happened?"

"If George winds up lost in the big, scary wilderness for a week, who cares? Jackass deserves it," Christopher retorted.

Francis sighed quietly, putting down the remote. "Nothing interesting."

"Don't you feel even a shred of guilt?" the girl demanded.

"_He tried to eviscerate my muk_. The only thing I'm sorry about is that _he_ wasn't the one who lost the arm."

"He was frustrated! It wouldn't have happened if…"

"If he hadn't kept losing. Well, I'm afraid that was his failing, not mine, just like what happened this time. If he wants to sulk off in the mountains or fall off a cliff, he's welcome to it."

Elliot finished his omelet. He poked at the white stuff, trying to separate it into something recognizable. No matter how much he pushed it about, it still looked the same.

"You don't like cole slaw?" Francis said.

The phrase sounded slightly familiar, something he must have overheard people mentioning before. "What is it?" he asked, poking it another time for good measure.

"Shredded cabbage mixed with mayonnaise and vinegar."

Elliot recoiled. "Ew."

"I guess we're done then."

The girl's phone rang. She flipped it open. "Yes?" she asked cheerfully. Her eyes widened in numb horror.

Elliot and Francis dropped the appropriate amount of money on the counter and headed out.

"So do you know what the Ecruteak gym leader's been doing?" Elliot asked. "If he'll be back?"

"Well, he might be," Francis replied. "He and a friend have been trying to find out about Suicune."

"Suicune…" Elliot repeated, thinking of the time on the beach in Cianwood. "But Suicune isn't…I mean, it it…"

"Real?" Francis said. Elliot nodded. "The best answer is that there are pokemon like Suicune, but they may not necessarily be what we think they are. If you mean Suicune the god, I don't know if that is real or not."

"I saw…well, I saw what my pokemon called a forest god," Elliot said. "A great venusaur, in a forest. I don't really understand what it was."

"I've found pokemon have a different idea of what a god is. Their gods can be smaller, local miracles. Perhaps that's true for humans too, and it's just that as we built greater cities, we required something greater for us to recognize a god."

"But God is God, isn't it?" Elliot said, confused.

Francis laughed. "I suppose you're right.

(x)

The two walked along one of the smaller paths through the wood. It was not quite too narrow to walk side by side, but it was close enough that Elliot was trailing behind. Francis stopped suddenly and Elliot bumped into his shoulder. "Hey, what-"

The older boy turned. "We shouldn't go this way. Let's go around."

"What?" Elliot said. He pushed past Francis to see what was ahead.

There was a fluffy striped clump of red fur, a discarded furry rag that was about the size Howler had been when Elliot first got him as a puppy and there was a string, a thick shiny string going from the rag to a sapling where the bark at the bottom was ragged like something small and weak had bitten at it and the ground was bare as if it had been clawed by something that could only reach about a foot or so around the tree and-

He started to turn back to Francis, opened his mouth to ask what this was but when he saw Francis' expression he screamed instead.


	16. Afterwards

This chapter's not short for once. I know that doesn't really make up for it being so late, but at least it's not late and short. Sorry, I'll try to keep on schedule.

The unnamed pokemon picked by Entei in Francis' story are growlithe/arcanine.

* * *

Chapter Sixteen: Afterwards

(x)

Elliot petted the back of Prowler's neck repetitively. Francis held out one hand and Prowler sniffed it perfunctorily.

"You're quite impressive," Francis told her. He looked to Elliot. "Do you know the stories of persian?"

Elliot shook his head.

"Well, it's said that, in the beginning, the three runners traveled throughout the world, racing across the lands. But however fast they were, they were only three and could not be everywhere and see everything at once. And so persian were created of the three, as the children of the runners. Their normal type stems from the compromise, and their elemental abilities evidence of the runner's blessing."

Elliot considered. "But they can't use fire attacks, can they?"

"It's also said that Entei went back on the agreement, deciding to withdraw her patronage, as she was of magma rather than flame and so wished for something lasting. Because of this, persian hold the abilities of thunder and water, but not fire."

Prowler listened, looking somewhat interested but primarily appreciative. Elliot had stopped petting her and she turned to lick the mussed fur down.

"Some say that Entei chose to bless one of the pokemon of her type, creating a rivalry between them and persian. Others say she made new ones, but because she acted alone and spurred the speed and grace of the persian, the new ones were slow and formless, and these," he said dramatically, "we know as slugma."

Elliot laughed. Prowler considered, then nosed him. Those are?

"Oh," Elliot said, digging about in his pack and retrieving his pokedex. "This thingy."

Prowler looked at it a moment, then him, then back to the picture, as if trying to make sense of a joke she didn't understand. After a moment she moved her shoulders in a shrugging motion and lay down.

Elliot stared at his pokedex a moment. He pulled his legs up and hugged them against his chest. With a resigned air, Prowler got back up and butted her head under Elliot's hand. He began petting her again.

"I don't understand," he said miserably.

"There's a reason for everything," Francis said. "But that reason isn't always a good one."

"But it didn't have-" Elliot was silent. He stared at the fire. A log broke in the center and the two pieces tilted down into the coals.

"The world balances itself," Francis said with a sort of conviction, or perhaps simply certainty.

"That wasn't balanced!" He let go of Prowler and hugged his legs against his chest, eyes screwed shut.

"No," Francis agreed quietly. "But it will be, Elliot. In the end." He looked to Prowler. "Don't you agree?"

And she spoke unhesitatingly, not even thinking of what she thought. Yes, she said, bobbing her head once to lend her statement strength, however irritating she found the gesture. She nosed the side of his face gently. It is true.

(x)

Elliot had calmed somewhat by the time they reached the next town. "Do you think the gym will be open again?" he asked.

"It's quite rare for Morty to abandon his duties even for a short time. I'm sure he'll be there."

Elliot smiled. "That's good," he said with relief. "Back in Kanto, some of the gym leaders were missing for a while."

"I don't think you'll have much trouble with that here. Where are you aiming for next?"

"I was thinking I'd go east, to Mahogany Town. I –" Elliot paused, aware of the impossibility of what he was about to say, then plunged on, "I don't think I can beat Jasmine if I try again." This was not what he was supposed to say, but it wasn't supposed to be true either. "My pokemon are…we need a lot more training to fight steel types. Only Howler –" He broke off again, closed his eyes. "Is Morty hard?" he said quickly, almost pleading.

"Not terribly. I've heard he tries to be fair. It's best to know how to fight ghost types, though."

Elliot wondered if Prowler knew how to fight them. He wondered if she'd listen if he told her. He thought suddenly of Miguel, and just as suddenly stopped thinking of him. "Hey, what do you think Morty was doing?"

"No idea. Maybe you can ask him."

(x)

"Pretty close with that last one, wasn't it? I mean another couple of days and he'd have reached town."

"Ah, Thomas," replied the other boy. "You really don't get it, do you?" His tone was almost joking, yet somber still in a way.

"Stop calling me that," he said sourly. "It's rather disrespectful."

"But it's just so apt. Surely you don't think our homicidal yet so very interesting serial killer just happened to suddenly fumble? The boy didn't escape."

"Our," the boy began sarcastically, "_beloved_ serial killer released him. That's what I mean. It very nearly blew up in his face, and _we _very nearly found out who our killer is."

"Such doubt," the second boy said. "Our beloved killer is quite meticulous. Surely he wouldn't be caught by something so anticlimactic."

"Isn't that how it always goes? The serial killer gets bolder, starts taking risks and leaving clues, playing games with people, and winds up caught? Maybe we'll know who our beloved serial killer is soon." The boy's voice had been trying for disaffected jadedness, but here it faltered a bit, becoming ever so slightly too enthusiastic, too hopeful.

The other boy smiled wryly, a bit oddly. "But our beloved killer isn't that sort, dear doubter. Remember there are strict rules he's following, and a purity of motive. This is no game he's playing. He did it for the same reason as all the rest, and in the same way."

"So you've found something out?"

"You didn't hear the details? Seems our almost-got-to-town Doe had just been involved in an unfortunate accident. His machoke was mutilated."

"I see," the first boy said after a moment. But then he paused. "But that's still a change, isn't it? Going after someone over an injury. And if our beloved serial killer has such purity of motive, shouldn't the trainer have been left at a hospital rather than patched up and abandoned?"

"You missed a crucial point."

"Oh?"

"A one-armed fighter. Not really that useful, you know? Nor going to do so well if, say, one were to release it for some reason."

"Ah."

Elliot was pressing his hands so tightly against his ears it hurt and his breath burst in and out of his throat, choking him and his heart was beating so fast it was not quite deafening enough and he was not listening, he was not listening at all, he didn't hear a thing.

"Hey," said Francis, touching his shoulder. Elliot's eyes opened. He'd set the tray of food down on the table. "It's okay."

The two were finished with their own meal. They stood, walking out.

"Even still," the first boy was arguing, "if 'purity of motive' means he leaves his victims alive so long afterward, sooner or later the police are going to get a live witness."

And Francis' expression changed to one of realization. He leaned over and hugged Elliot.

Elliot burst into tears.

(x)

Francis had been right. The gym was open.

Elliot focused on this. It was something better to focus on. He didn't need to think about the what the other things were.

The outside of the gym looked the same as last time, bland, worn, and nonthreatening.

The inside was black.

Elliot swallowed nervously. The first few feet were wooden flooring, and past that was pure, unrelenting darkness, as if light had simply stopped on the edges. Even as he began to panic quietly at the thought of trying to deal with this new thing, he felt an odd sort of relief at the distraction. He didn't dwell on this.

The blackness ran along a straight, neat line from one side of the room to the other. At least he presumed it did. The walls vanished along with the floor. He walked over to the one on his left. Up close, the lines remained very straight, very neat, and very absolute.

He reached out one hand, then jerked back in surprise as he saw it vanish, leaving him with a bloodless stump for an instant. He took a moment to stare at his fully attacked and present fingers, calming down, then reached in again.

He couldn't feel the darkness, but swinging his unseen hand to the side, he could feel the same wall he touched on the seeable side.

So, Elliot thought with some deliberateness, trying to convince himself, the darkness was just darkness, not something itself. It was nothing. He could just walk into it.

He did.

It was nothing, horribly nothing, and Elliot felt terrified and defenseless. Imagined monsters swarmed around him and he couldn't see, couldn't know. His legs weakened and he almost cowered.

But it wasn't real. He closed his eyes and it was better somehow. He tried to calm down. There wasn't anything there. He just had to walk through it.

He opened his eyes again. There was no difference. He started to walk forward.

At first his steps were normal. But he couldn't shake the feeling that he was about to run into something. He took smaller steps, then smaller, until he realized he was inching forward, afraid he would run into some obstacle, then, annoyed at himself, he deliberately took a huge step.

There was a moment of horror as his foot touched nothing where the floor should be and he toppled forward. He screamed.

Or did he?

Because he found himself falling backward onto the wooden planks of the floor just in front of the darkness, with the entrance at his back, right where he'd started. Besides the thump as he hit the floor, there had been silence.

Elliot entered again, moving gingerly. Again he stepped and fell. Again he opened his mouth to scream and failed. And again he found himself out on the lighted floor.

Steeling himself, he entered a third time.

He slid one foot out, making sure he could feel the ground at all times. The scuffing feeling of his shoe against the floor made him feel panicky. He felt certain that it would catch and he'd trip. And fall.

He reached an area of void and jerked back to avoid it so sharply that he fell backwards. One hand touched nothingness and he nearly rolled left into it before he managed to catch himself, breath racing.

After a few moments he got back up. He wanted, almost painfully now, to give up, to ask anyone so that it could be over. But there wasn't anyone there, and the only way back was the one thing he was trying to avoid.

More slowly and more carefully, he found the missing area and swung his foot to one side until it encountered something solid. He stepped onto that and continued.

He managed to keep upright the second time. The third time he fell again but managed to stay on the solid areas, and after an endless time the world abruptly reappeared. He was standing on a regular wooden floor made of regular boards, and before him was an arena. He looked reflexively over his shoulder to see blackness, then back to the only other person in the room.

"If you're wondering, it's pretty easy to get back," he remarked. "Falling brings you to the other side."

Elliot had not been wondering and would have preferred delaying the knowledge that he'd either have to walk back through there or fall to his apparent death a little longer. "You're the gym leader?" he said after a moment, trying to forget about it again.

"Indeed. I am Morty, keeper of Ecruteak's Badge." He was a young man, looking rather casual and unruffled. Elliot found it somehow more annoying to be faced with someone not _that_ much older than him who seemed so unaffected by the barrier he'd just had to travel. "The battle will be one on one. Begin."

He hadn't even asked, just stated, Elliot thought distractedly as he picked Howler's pokeball. Not that Elliot would have disagreed with the terms but it was just weird somehow.

Morty's pokemon materialized a moment later, if that was the word for what was, Elliot thought a bit peevishly, nothing more than a ball of gas.

"Ember!"

"Hypnosis," Morty countered.

Howler reacted first. A shining fireball shot at the other pokemon, momentarily eclipsing it. The flames passed through, but seemed to almost tug at the gastly's body, stretching out the edges. And from the way it shuddered, Elliot thought the attack must have had some effect.

The gastly pulled itself in. Its slitted eyes opened and seemed to grow larger. They glowed a sinister red.

"Flamethrower!" Elliot shouted quickly. Howler shot the flames at it. When the attack finished, the gastly was quivering, eyes shut, but they snapped open again and Howler slumped down asleep. Almost instantly the gastly dived down to bite into the growlithe's back and pull away with a ripping motion. The fragmented edges of its body pulled closer together.

Howler yelped, awakening. The gastly tried to pull away, but not quickly enough. Howler jumped it, biting down. The ghost pokemon's body seeped around his fangs but slowly, and the tears took several moments to reseal.

"Nightshade."

The gastly sent a ripple of energy that looked like a psychic attack, save for the way the air darkened as it passed instead of just distorting. When it struck, rather than lifting Howler it seemed to smash downward, making the growlithe shudder and brace as if from a blow.

Fire moves worked, Elliot was sure of it, but they went through. "Try flame wheel!"

Howler caught his breath and formed a ring of flames, throwing this out at his opponent. This seemed to work for a few moments as the flames hugged the body of the gastly, but with an eerie shriek it ripped itself free.

An eerie shriek…

Morty gave another order and the gastly sent another ripple of darkened energy at Howler.

"Howler, make light!"

Howler looked back at Elliot, whining curiously.

He hadn't tried using that in a fight, but it'd hurt the zubat that touched it, and maybe this way would keep the flame there. "Make a ball of light that stays, remember?"

Howler wagged his tail happily. He did. Then he turned back to the fight and stilled.

Perhaps unsure of what was happening, Morty waited.

After a moment, Howler barked, creating a rounded blue-white flame that bobbed in the air with the uneven, regular motion of a ball floating on the ocean.

"Now hit the gastly with it!"

The flame swung wildly to the right, then the left. Belatedly, Elliot realized none of Howler's other attacks involved pushing already present fire around, and that they'd never tried with this one either. For that matter, he wasn't ever quite sure what the attack was.

The gastly watched the accelerating and growingly erratic fireball with a look of concern. The attack whizzed by it and the pokemon seemed to jump, climbing a foot higher in the air. But then, apparently realizing that Howler had no control over where he aimed, it calmed.

It was at this point the fireball hit.

The gastly shrieked, darting left and right. One corner of its body seemed to have the flame stuck in it, which remained stubbornly burning despite all the gastly's efforts to pull away. Morty solved this problem by recalling it.

"Good battle," he said, handing over the badge.

Victory would have been nicer if afterward Elliot hadn't had to run into the total darkness and plummet.

(x)

"So you won?"

Elliot nodded. "Yeah."

Elliot had agreed to meet back up with Francis at the Pokecenter after the battle. Now they sat quietly.

A few tables off, a conversation was taking place.

"Really, your magmar beat Jasmine?"

"Yeah, well, you know how good fire's against steel. She doesn't even have much to beat it – dunno why but her steelix seems to have trouble with earthquake attacks. Of course, pretty much everything else is at a disadvantage."

"Really? I heard they're not too great with fighting types."

"Maybe, but I didn't notice that when I used my machop. That's probably just another rumor. You don't have a fire type?"

"No," the girl said, shaking her head and making ripples in her long auburn hair. "I had a growlithe from an egg but I'd already gotten six and it was too young to be a battler anyway, so I released it on the way here."

Francis stood up and walked to the two speakers. He bent slightly and spoke to the girl, his voice too soft for Elliot to hear. Her face lit up. "Really?"

He shushed her and she nodded, still grinning. "Sure," she said, her voice muted. Elliot could just make the words out. "You really know where I can find one?"

Francis' back was to Elliot. He was standing at an angle, enough for Elliot to see the corner of a smile in profile. Perhaps it was the odd position that lent the expression a somehow strange look.

The girl stood and they started to head out. As he passed Elliot, Francis said quietly: "Don't wait up for me, just keep going." He didn't turn towards him.

They walked out.


	17. Doch

Sorry. I'd like to say there was some sort of reason I haven't been updating, but there's really no excuse.

I modified the last couple of chapters to make it clearer which girl was which. I liked hearing the speculation, but it wasn't really part of the story and besides, it was because of bad writing in the first place.

So to clear things up, the girl with the igglybuff has short brown hair and was the one killed in Ch12, and was not the one Elliot was talking to before the match. There are very few recurring characters in this, so most of the time a character mentioned or appearing is only going to have that one role.

* * *

Chapter Seventeen: Doch

_German__, especially colloquial German, has a wealth of small words, usually __adverbs__, that are particularly difficult to translate as they do not have a grammatical function, but rather convey a sense in which the message is meant to be understood. The most infamous example perhaps is doch, which roughly means "don't you realize that...?", or "in fact it is so, though someone is denying it"._

(x)

Elliot was keeping his pokemon out again.

Caw was attentive this time, and noticed. He asked the others about it during a lunch break, Sono first, Prowler last. Three said it was over the dead pokemon. Prowler disagreed.

It's because of the boy he was traveling with, she said. He was better before than he is now.

Caw considered their suggestions and decided there was nothing he could do about it.

He was, after all, only a pokemon.

(x)

When Elliot went to heal his pokemon, he could hear the TV was on in the lobby. "Police are still investigating the recent death of a trainer, whose identity has not yet been released to the public out of respect for his family. The cause of death is currently believed to be wild pokemon..." Ignoring it, he headed outside. Unluckily, posters were up, dotting the town.

On them was a long-haired, smiling girl Elliot tried not to recognize and failed. He walked closer to read the smaller text below the huge MISSING headline. Her last know whereabouts were the Goldenrod Baby Tourny. Elliot wondered if her explanation of the cubone had been the last thing she'd said before vanishing.

She'd seemed so calm. Not like the sort of person who'd run away.

He didn't think any further about it.

Rather than eat lunch at the Pokecenter, he headed to a small restaurant. Midway through the mean, someone by the counter turned on the television. The news anchor warned about a murderer. Elliot didn't think about that either. He finished his hamburger and left.

Elliot thought about staying at the town until tomorrow. He thought about the trainers in the Center talking about the news.

I should get going, he thought. I've still got a long way before I reach the next gym.

He left.

(x)

Later, around the campfire in the time between twilight and night, Elliot looked over the map. Mt. Mortar – what a weird name, he thought. It sounded like place in a book. Moria. He felt a sudden sense of unease.

There were two ways to get past it. One was by going through, which was marked a shortcut on the map but required going through a multi-leveled, pitch-black cave. The other way was to go around through the mountains.

Mountains, Elliot decided. Definitely mountains.

He looked at the path on the map. The next morning he headed north.

The ground was rocky and the nights cooler. By the time he reached the next town he'd decided to stay the night at the Pokecenter.

The town was small, as was the Center. It was only about a third full, with most of the trainers a year or two older than Elliot. For some reason, Elliot found this reassuring.

Someone had checked the TV's guide, and after supper flipped to a movie. Elliot, like most of the others, stayed and watched. It was a mixed genre, mostly action but with an obligatory romance and an incomprehensible plot, not so much because of complexity as that each new scene tended to contradict the last. Midway through, it cut off.

"Breaking news," said an anchor with perfectly molded blond hair. "A preliminary report just released sheds some light on the bizarre story of the recent trainer death. According to the report, the boy was was robbed not only of his pokemon and pokegear, but also everything else but the clothing he was wearing..."

Elliot slipped off his chair and headed away to his room, letting the reporter's voice fade into the background.

When he woke up late in the morning he felt unrested, like he'd had nightmares, but he didn't remember any of his dreams.

The television wasn't on. Two girls were eating breakfast and talking. One had a newspaper open.

"-Really makes you wonder about that missing girl. Hey, listen to this: 'Although reportedly uninjured when last seen by his traveling companions, the body was found with the right arm removed well prior to the time of death. According to the coroner, the stump had mostly healed, having been treated as if by a doctor at some point.'"

Elliot didn't feel hungry. He left without eating.

In the market square were three girls playing with three cubone. The girls were gangly, skinny from rapid growth and skin tan from the sun. Fast healing scabs dotted their knees and shins and elbows. The cubone were the color of clay with tiny arms and legs that looked like they'd been rolled too thin in the molding. They reminded him of the featherless baby spearow he'd seen in a video at school, with none of the energy. There was a scratch along one cubone's arm. There was no scab over it, although it was evident it was not fresh, nor healed enough for a scab to drop off. Perhaps the cubone had worried it.

There was something uncomfortable in the scene, and Elliot kept walking.


	18. Pure

Yes, I _am_ updating again and plan to continue to update, although you guys who only review if I'm slow are really not good encouragement to be timely. If you like the story, review the story! Don't wait to say something until you want to add that I'm not updating fast enough.

* * *

_"Are they not fresh and beautiful?" I cried with all the enthusiasm of a man fresh from the fogs of Baker Street._

_But Holmes shook his head gravely._

_"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."_

_- The Adventure of the Copper Beeches_

Chapter Eighteen: Pure

(x)

Elliot was moving along, watching the stream by the side of the path as it bubbled past. It was shallow, only a few inches above the rounded stones of its bed, far too shallow for any pokemon to live in. It was pure and clean, without any intruding greenery to mar the picture.

He was walking upstream, although at the moment the path wasn't perceptibly sloped up. The stream widened and narrowed as he moved on.

After several hours, the path did begin to slope, and it grew colder. By the time he reached the next town he had begun to shiver and was wishing he had a heavier jacket.

He stopped off at the Center, intending to heal his pokemon and eat a slightly late lunch, then continue on. The Nurse Joy quickly dissuaded him.

"The path gets very steep past this point, and it's icy. What looks like a short trip on the map will take several times that long, and you don't want to spend the night outside." She directed him firmly to a store to buy appropriate equipment.

None of it was too expensive, probably lucky since Nurse Joy had been adamant he couldn't continue without it.

All of it was heavy – the boots, pants, undervest, jacket. Elliot had been expecting things made of fur and leather, like in movies about explorers, but all of it was synthetic. "Waterproof," explained the clerk. "You'd need two sets of clothing otherwise, one for the lower areas where it's above freezing, and one for the higher. If you get wet, you'd freeze when it got higher."

Elliot didn't really understand, but he didn't ask for a more detailed explanation, and the clerk didn't volunteer one. He bought everything he was told and trekked back to the Pokecenter, acutely aware of how much heavier it all was.

It was late afternoon, almost time for supper. Elliot called his mother and said hi to Merci, who'd gotten home from school an hour or two back. He told them he'd gotten another badge and that he was up in the mountains now, where it was cold and there was always snow at the top.

Merci was delighted, saying she wanted to see.

"You're too young," Elliot's mother said immediately, voice final. A bit more softly, she added, "And Elliot, you be careful too."

(x)

Beyond the town it was even colder. Elliot had felt excited talking to Merci, but in practice, it wasn't so fun. He'd put on all the stuff he'd been told to buy, feeling faintly ridiculous in the bulky outfit, and tramped out. After an hour or so of walking, he'd gotten used to the bulk, but it had gotten cold enough that his face was numb. There was snow on the ground. At first he walked over it, but it grew deeper and before long he was slogging through it.

He wasn't sure if it was the drag of the snow or the heavy boots, but it wasn't long before his feet felt like they were made of lead, although admittedly warm lead. His clothing was working better than he'd expected, completely blocking the wind. He wouldn't even have been aware of it if it wasn't for his exposed face, which was alternating stinging when the wind hit and an overall numb ache when it didn't. He pulled his mittened hands out of his pockets and made another attempt at pulling the hood further around his head.

He didn't know how far he walked. The grade of the path was steep, and his walk was slower, each step shorter than normal. He kept his eyes down, both to see the path and try to block some of the wind, so he couldn't gauge his travel speed by watching how fast he approached distant landmarks. On the map, it hadn't been far at all.

The sun climbed in the sky along with him, then began to sink. It was around three when Elliot had a moment of panic. He had no idea where he was or how much farther it was to the town, and he had a sinking feeling that the Nurse Joy's warning had sounded a lot like the times he'd been told firmly not to do something by someone trying hard not to say what would happen if he ignored them.

He pushed the feeling away, thinking that it hadn't been that far on the map, that he was surely most of the way.

He kept going, growing more and more unsettled, until finally, he saw buildings in the distance.

In another situation, he might have sped up, wanting to reach them faster after how nervous he'd been. This time, his relief more exhausted than excited, he slowed his pace to something easier.

(x)

The town was tiny, so tiny it didn't have a Pokecenter. Not that it mattered much. There didn't seem to be many trainers around, and Elliot hadn't seen any wild pokemon.

Elliot was sitting quietly and eating a heavy breakfast at the one inn. The tables were spaced well apart so that visiting trainers could keep their pokemon out without crowding each other. Elliot's typical junk food of cheeseburgers and pizza was absent from the menu, but the stew he was eating was filling and tasted interesting, with an odd mixture of spices but mild enough that it wasn't _too_ different from food in Kanto. Most importantly, it was hot. His pokemon were also eating, Prowler and Din included for once. Elliot's insistence that the food was good was probably far less to blame than the cold outside, but that didn't stop him from feeling happy the two had listened to him for once. Prowler was dispatching a large hunk of cooked meat, as was Din. They seemed somewhat unused to the texture, pulling fiercely for mouthfuls that came apart easily. Howler had been given the same and was having his own problems, seeming confused as to how he was supposed to deal with a chunk of food larger than he could fit in his mouth. He seemed to be enjoying himself, though, mock-growling and gnawing clumsily on it. Caw and Sono were eating a mixture of food that had been cut up into chunks of various colors. Most looked similar in color and texture to Discord's own meal of unfamiliar but intact fruits or vegetables – Elliot wasn't sure which, although he thought he recognized some of the same in his soup.

Another boy was sitting less quietly. "Do you know anything?" he was asking. He was apparently a trainer, although his pokemon were presumably inside the five pokeballs around his waist rather than out like Elliot's.

The man he had accosted was less than forthcoming. "No," he said, not bothering to look up at the teen. They were both sitting by the counter.

"Don't think I'm going to give up just because you won't say anything."

"There's nothing to say."

"I hear three trainers have disappeared this year."

Another man spoke up in a long-suffering voice. "The mountains are dangerous, that's why we tell people not to go trying to find a myth and why people who don't listen sometimes don't come back. If you're so insistent we must know, then listen: there is no secret pokemon. It's too dangerous to travel, nothing more."

"If no one can get up there to explore, there might be something no one's seen before."

"Look, kid," said the first one tiredly. "If there was, don't you think we'd be the first to rush out? And don't you think we'd know more about this 'indisputable' evidence than a kid who heard a couple of fourth-hand stories over in Kanto?"

"I will find it," the boy snapped. He walked out, an icy gust blowing it as he yanked the door open, then a bang as it slammed closed.

The men exchanged glances. "Your son?" one said in an undertone.

"I'll tell him."


End file.
